I installed Parallels Desktop 5.0 when I bought my first Mac (a Mac Book Pro) in late 2009. I use it to run a totally legal copy of Windows XP Professional (SP3), and I have found the Parallels VM instance of XP to be generally a very positive experience -- that is, until I upgraded to the Parallels 9344 update, which triggers the well-known Windows XP product activation loop and renders useless my entire VM and all the applications installed inside it. I had dealt with this issue once before, when I was first installing WinXP under Parallels, playing with the settings, etc., and I discovered that anything that even suggests to WinXP that it may have been moved from one environment to another (for example, changing from one processor to two in the VM hosting it) will trigger the product activation loop, wherein one can never log in to Windows because when you try, you get a Windows message saying that in order to proceed, this copy of Windows must be activated, and asking Do you want to activate Windows; if you select No, the log-in screen reappears and when you try to log in again, you get the same message; if you select Yes, then the Windows Product Activation window appears saying that Windows is already activated, but the next log-in attempt takes you right back to the same message ("in order to proceed, ... must be activated"). All of which left me absolutely hosed, unless I could find a solution. I researched the Web extensively, but was unable to find a solution that actually worked, so I just reinstalled WinXP and then made sure I never changed the VM settings after installation; after that, I had no more problems. I installed all my Windows apps into the WinXP VM, and all went very well -- no problems at all -- until I installed the 9344 update to Parallels. Apparently this tweaked the interface to the VM somewhat, relative to the build (9305, I think) that I originally purchased, and WinXP detected this, and went flying off into this endless activation loop again. I realize that I could probably resolve this by reinstalling everything -- WinXP plus all my apps -- but I'm really hoping to avoid that, as it's several hours of work. I also realize that the root issue here is a WinXP "feature", not a Parallels issue, except to the extent that the WinXP issue is very well known, so I would hope that the Parallels team would be aware that all Parallels updates must present IDENTICALLY the same interface to WinXP VMs as the interface prior to the update, otherwise WinXP VMs (at least a lot of them) will be rendered useless without a total reinstall after the Parallels update. Does anyone out there (especially someone from the Parallels team) have any insights as to how I might resolve this, short of a complete reinstall of my VM? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Same problem My issue is that I'm trying to clone a working XP laptop through Transporter and can't reinstall the software. This sucks. I REALLY hate WGA! All it does is screw people trying to get a job done who have legitimately licensed software.
