[CrankyPants]

I suspect there were other factors which prevented your success.

There were no measures to technologically limit one's ability to perform multiple installations from a purchased OS X install disc. You could buy two different Tiger installers and they'd checksum the same, and there were no serial numbers to be entered. It was an honor thing.

[danielparks]

There was a restriction on VMs, but they've since eased up on that. I imagine it was because of the Hackintosh thing.

I'm reasonably confident the OS didn't actively try to detect that it was running in a VM, but VMware Fusion (and presumably other such software) would prevent you from installing the OS.

There was a relatively simple work around (a hack) that allowed you to install in a VM. I think it was as simple as touching the right path.

[yaddayadda]

At the point that I was trying to solve this problem (and not getting paid as a result) I was unable to find anyone who had successfully gotten SL to run in a VMWare VM or Lion to run in a SL VM. Interestingly, I did find individuals who had Lion running in Lion VMs, but that didn't help me get back up and running.

Edited to add: You are correct, the technical restriction was on the VMWare side, but IIRC it was because of legal threats from Apple. Apparently earlier versions of VMWare would run SL without any problems, but the VMWare version I had would not not and I couldn't get a copy of the older version.