Solo Practice

My experience with Parallels

By Michael R. Grossman

I previously installed Windows XP on my iMac, running it under Boot Camp, and it works great. I switch over to XP when I run EZ Filing, a bankruptcy preparation application.

(If you do a small amount of personal bankruptcy work, I recommend EZ Filing. But perhaps that's for another post...)

Anyhow, I've been getting tired of having to reboot my machine and completely switch over to XP, so I thought I'd give Parallels a try. It certainly would be nice to run my Windows programs within my Mac desktop, right? Well... my experiment didn't work so well.

After installing Parallels and attempting to start Windows XP, I was asked for a new license key. Apparently Windows thought it was running on an entirely new machine rather than on the same machine but in a different... um... environment. And since the version of XP I purchased had only one license key, I wasn't able to use this beause it was registered when initially installed via Boot Camp.

Harumph.

I emailed Parallels support and they told me to contact Microsoft who should, out of the goodness of their hearts, simply give me a new license key for XP.

Microsoft told me the problem is Parallels because their software is not recognizing the registered copy of Windows that already exists.

Surprisingly, I tend to believe Microsoft in this one. I was not informed in the Parallels installation process that Windows must be loaded after Parallels. I think the virtual desktop isn't properly recognizing the existing copy of Windows.

So I now have a useless copy of Parallels.

For now I'm going back to Boot Camp when I need to run XP. Perhaps someone out there has a solution or a better experience with VMware Fusion?

Full post as published by Practical Lawyering on May 20, 2008 (boomark / email).