Hi, I've just migrated Parallels Desktop 7 & my Windows XP virtual machine to a new Mac (my former iMac died on me last week). I'm surprised to see that Windows XP is not asking to be re-activated. Is this normal behavior? (I checked in the settings and windows does state that it has already been activated) Thanks,
I don't think that XP is as picky as Win7 when it comes to activation and licensing, but I would assume that as you are still running windows in a virtual environment it doesn't actually matter what the host machine is, or what os it is running as Windows sees the Parallels software as the 'computer'. Not exactly sure but that would be my guess!?
Yes, just as Stuart described it, XP sees the VM as the computer on which it's installed, and since the virtualized environment hasn't changed that much (if at all), XP doesn't freak out. The VM I have in Parallels on my Mac was one I originally created in VMware on an Ubuntu Linux host. I just copied the VM files to my Mac's hard drive, fired up Parallels, and Parallels was happy to convert the VM from VMware format to Parallels format. The guest XP instance has never complained about changes, so I'd imagine that moving from one Mac to another, and staying within Parallels as well, wouldn't change anything as far as the XP guest is concerned. Happy VM-ing,
reactivation issue may occur while migrating from bootcamp to parallels. but it means move from real hardware to virtual.
