Having trouble activating on a new Mac

Hi there,

I recently got my MacBook Pro back from a repair, which involved having the entire logic board (including the SSD) replaced with a new one. In the meantime, I had Parallels Desktop installed on the Mac mini I have at work, as a temporary machine to run my VMs on. Following the advice found on this article, I signed out of the Mac mini, uninstalled that instance of Parallels, stored my PVM files somewhere safe and away from the Mac mini and attempted to sign back in on the newly-repaired MacBook Pro. Instead of it activating, I was presented with the following error:

"This license has reached its activation limit and can no longer be used to activate new product copies.
Please read this article for more information about the license activation limit."

I haven't encountered this problem before, especially as there was a period of time where I was re-installing macOS on both machines, whilst also changing what the active licensed machine was quite regularly without any issue. Whenever transferring the license, I wouldn't bother signing out as I knew the warning stating "the license is already in use" would appear (which had a button to deactivate the old machine and activate the new one).

The article linked in the quoted error message above takes me to a page explaining that for every license key I own, I can only activate it on one machine at a time, and I'd need to purchase more keys if I wanted to run Parallels concurrently on multiple machines. This is absolutely fine, as I only ever intend to have one instance of Parallels running at a time.

Is there a hidden policy on the amount of times I can do this, and if so have I hit that limit? I'd really like to get this resolved so I'm able to run my VMs on my much more powerful, in comparison to the Mac mini, MacBook Pro. Any help here will be much appreciated - I'm happy to provide more details if needs be.

Thanks!

 

Hello @Irpbarton, we have no hidden policy about Parallels Desktop license key activation.
But as an expectation, we can help you to make changes with your key and you will be able to reactivate it.
I've made changes with your key, please check the activation issue and let us know the results.

 

Hi Maria,

Sorry for the late reply on this and thanks for alleviating the issue and sorting it out; I've now activated it on the new Mac and it's all working fine. Also thanks for clarifying on there being no policy - I was pretty sure there wasn't, but I just wanted to double-check!

Seeing as this has happened to a few other people on this forum before me, is there any specific reason why this happens? I thought it was because of me frequently changing the actively licensed machine, but if it isn't that, it would be really handy to know what actually caused it and if there's anything I should (or shouldn't) do to prevent it happening again.

Thanks again!

 

@Irpbarton, it happened when customer tried to activate license o new Mac, or when customer upgrade his old machine and tried to activate key again.
We have a politics: 1 key for 1 Mac, and when you would like to transfer it, you need to deactivate it on the old Mac and only right after that activate it again.

 

I have the same problem. I tried deactivating on my old mac but still does not work. Can't get through to support on: https://my.parallels.com/support/pdb/technical - keep getting error messages. Frustration level very high right now!!!!

 

Hi JacobH4, thank you for reaching out! We have sent a private message. Please reply there to check and help you better. Thanks, Saravanan.