I purchased a brand new Windows7 Professional and plan to install it in Parallels 7 in OSX Lion. As you know, the copy of Windows7 I bought can be only allowed to be installed in one PC. I just wondered, if I have to re-install OSX Lion or Parallels 7, can I re-install the Windows7 I bought? Can the copy of re-installed Windows7 be activated?
From what you say I can discern that you bought a so called OEM license, which means it's locked to a particular hardware, this means you can install it and re-install it again if you wish but on the same hardware. Parallels doesn't recommend the use of OEM licenses for using in VMs, specially if they are both used in Bootcamp and Parallels, once installed in one of these places it will have to be reactivated in the other place too because Windows doesn't see the same hardware, this in turn will require you to activate by phone, if the MS person on the other side is not an imbecile he/she will allow you to activate your OEM license in both sides.
Hi, Specimen, Thank you very much for your reply! If I only use the copy in PD (not in Boot Camp), may I use it and re-install it as I wish?
I don't exactly understand why you need to reinstall windows that much, but mind you that each time you reinstall it you have 30 days to activate it, activation requires contacting MS, by the tenth time MS will probably start get suspicious, but this is independent of being a OEM license or not. In a normal usage scenario of a Windows VM you shouldn't have to worry about this.
Hi, Specimen, I just want to figure out something. I will never reinstall windows so much. Thanks again.
Hello If you own retail copy of windows 7 (not OEM), you can install, un-install and re-install as you wish. Somewhere i found that retail version may be installed twice (once as stand-alone, once as VM). I have retail windows 7 Pro on bootcamp and on parallels, both activated (but I had to use activation via phone for installation in VM) and no problems. If you have OEM and you want to use it only in parallels, install it, activate it and make snapshot. If anything goes wrong after that, you can always go back to the snapshot version. (you can make as many snapshots as you want, personally, i make snapshot after clean install and after patching. If I finish the game, i use snapshot from after patching, so everything is clean).
* It is possible to have the same Windows OEM license both in bootcamp and in a VM but it's not advisable, might work or not depending on the will of the MS person on the phone. * Instead of using snapshots for this it would be safer to clone the VM (make a copy), snapshots can be messy if they go to far in time, I don't trust snapshots for more than testing something then going back.
I've got a somewhat similar problem. I have the family pack upgrade, and am installing one copy on a MBP where I already have my old (legit) copy of Windows XP professional. When going from XP to 7 you have to do essentially a clean install per MS's instructions, so I just followed Parallel's script to setup a new Win 7 machine. But now it won't activate, apparently because to MS a "clean" install means overwriting an existing installation of Windows as opposed to installing over a wiped disk. Sigh. So now it won't activate. I could copy my old virtual XP machine in the Finder and reinstall 7 over it but it's a pain to do that; any way to get the new Win 7 virtual machine to see that it's a legit installation without a whole reinstallation? And if I do have to reinstall, what's the easiest way to get the un-activated Win 7's files and applications over to the reinstalled Win 7 with the least effort? Rob
I installed Windows 7 in Bootcamp and activated it. I then created the bootcamp partition as a Parallels VM using the Bootcamp partition. This worked for a while, now I am being asked to activate under bootcamp. I have not done this yet. Apparently I was not supposed to activate it in Bootcamp prior to doing so in the VM. But I have now done so and installed numerous applications as well as copied much data. Is there a fix to this before I need to contact MS to activate my VM? I really do not want to uninstall and reinstall all of these applications if I do not need to. My product key shows under Computer/Properties but it will not auto activate. I get an error: Code: 0xC004C020 Description: The activation server reported that the multiple activation key has exceeded its limit. I am using OSX 10.8.3 Parallels Build 8.0.18483 (Revision 860857; March 30, 2013) With Windows 7 64bit.
The only possibility is to call MS. "The activation server reported that the multiple activation key has exceeded its limit." : There's way around this, the limit for activations for that key has been reached, you need a new one.
