Have to Re-activate Windows XP (Boot Camp) again & again.

I've just upgraded to Parallels 3.0 (B4128). I have Boot Camp with Windows XP installed & I have been using a previous version of Parallels.

My previous version of Parallels was requiring me to re-activate Windows XP whenever I started in Parallels. And once that was done, it required me to re-activate Windows XP whenever I start in Boot Camp... back & forth.

I have upgraded to 3.0 and activated Windows XP while running as a guest OS. And the manual says:

"Using Boot Camp Windows XP via virtual machine
may require to re-activate Windows XP. After that, you can use Boot Camp as usually to boot into the Windows partition, or you can boot into it via Parallels virtual machine, see Booting via Parallels (page 254)." -- Page 254 corroborates that it is unnecessary to re-activate Windows XP after initial re-activation in Parallels.

However, I activated in Parallels & used Windows perfectly fine (almost, see below). Then I restarted in "Boot Camp as usually into the Windows partition", and it is telling me I have 3 days to reactivate Windows. I clicked I'll reactivate later, then restarted in OS X and started up Parallels. Now Parallels tells me I need to reactivate Windows XP immediately to even log in.

So currently, I will lose access to both Boot Camp & Parallels in 3 days w/out re-reactivating.

Someone has told me that they read somewhere that Parallels 2.5 is required to upgrade to 3.0. I don't remember which version I was running prior to 3.0, but I'll try downgrading to 2.5 then re-upgrading to 3.0. Also, I'll try upgrading to Boot Camp 1.3 as I was running 1.2 or 1.1.2.

-JB

As an aside: I may be blind, but it seems impossible to access these forums from anywhere in the Parallels site? I found it via Google for "Parallels 3.0 problems".

Other problems: Another post (http://forum.parallels.com/thread12603.html) lists some problems they've had also.

I tested 2 games with Parallels 3.0: Eve-Online and Counter-Strike 1.6. CS1.6 is listed as a game that will work (http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/3d/); however, for me it did not work correctly. Sometimes the textures/animations were missing, also there is inconsistent behavior with mouse movement rate. I tried putting Parallels in fullscreen while playing & it crashed my entire Mac (the hard crash where the screen slowly fills dark & tells you to hold the power button in multiple languages). There were also mouse issues in Eve-Online and I could not get it to work. If you want to run games get CrossOver (http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/browse/cat). At first I thought it was hokey as there were minor graphical flaws on Eve-Online at the edge of the window, but compared to Parallels it works & is playable.

Also, I could not get Shared Networking to work (which is the default setup I think). I had to goto Edit Virtual Machine... and change it to Bridged Networking (which is a bit of a pain if I switch from wired/wireless as I need to stop the VM to change).

 

It seems to work now:

Strangely, I rebooted in Boot Camp & it didn't mention anything about activating Windows. So I upgraded to the Boot Camp 1.3 drivers updated Windows XP (including the Genuine Advantage Tool or whatever that I had been been avoiding installing) and restarted in Boot Camp. Still no mention of activating Windows so I restarted in OS X & gave Parallels a try. I deleted the old Boot Camp mount which was at ~/Documents/Parallels/My Boot Camp, and created a new Parallels drive to my Boot Camp.

It asked me to reactivate Windows to log in, so I typed in my #s again & it said I've reactivated too many times so I had to call up India using the MS tollfree # and got a new code. I told the lady I was installing Windows XP on Parallels w/ Boot Camp on a Mac, but she didn't seem to give a damn (there were other posts saying the MS rep wouldn't give them a new # b/c he said he was running on a Mac.. guess policy changed).

I've tried rebooting in Boot Camp & Parallels multiple times and neither are asking for reactivation, but then again the earlier version of Boot Camp + Parallels worked fine until suddenly it started asking me.

-JB

So maybe it was installing the Genuine Advantage thingy, or maybe it was Boot Camp 1.3 drivers, or re-adding my old Parallels Virtual Machine drive, or just plain old restarting (the good ol' standard Microsoft fix).