Confused about Windows licensing - do I need 2 licenses - 1 for Bootcamp and 1 for my Parallels VM??

Hi,
Q. There are a lot of opinions posted on various forums, including MS forums and its not at all clear from my perspective and I just need to know ... do I need a second license of Windows 7 in order to be able to use both Bootcamp and a Parallels VM?

I ask because as I was going through the install process with Parallels 11 (which I just bought a few days ago), it looks as if my Windows 7 OEM version will require activation. I didn't proceed when I saw this - as I am using an OEM version of Windows 7 which I purchased to work with Bootcamp a few months ago. Past experience using an OEM version of Windows shows that the number of activations is very limited.

Thanks
Stu

 

Hi Stu,
The simple answer is yes you would use another one of your OEM activations in order to create a new VM. You can however create a vm that uses your bootcamp partition: http://kb.parallels.com/en/112941 gives you two options on how to do this.