I use ievms to browser test Internet Explorer. Every couple of months, the IE8 VM expires (This copy of Windows must be activated…). The only solution is to reinstall the VM. ievms maintainer xdissent also made iectrl, a command line tool to make stuff like this easier.

iectrl reinstall 8

I tried removing .ievms/ files, and re-installing via the bash script. No dice. iectrl is the way to go.