Need genuine microsoft OS....

I just received Parallels 8 and I downloaded it along with windows 7 ultimate 64 bit on my iMac. Issue is, I cannot get the Windows to download, i get an error saying that I need a genuine version of windows before I can proceed. I am getting the impression I need to pay more than what I have already paid for to get this thing working. I tried using the external drive to transfer data, but that was a no-go as well as trying to make it work over my network...any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

Hello,

the description of the problem is kind of difficult to understand, but let me guess the issue is windows licensing. Parallels is really "software PC" which spares you need to buy hardare box. But if you want to run any other OS in this "soft PC" you need license for it, if it is needed. You can install various versions of Unix OSes which are free, you can, under some conditions, install MacOSX, but if you want to install Windows, you need to pay "due" to Microsoft. Except for specific cases when you can move existing license from some box to your Parallels VM, you need to get new license for Win7 or whatever. This is same for all "virtual environments" so even free Virtual box requires licensed version of Windows, all because of MS, not the Parallels,...

The only software environment which does not require MS license is CrossOffice (http://www.codeweavers.com/) which contains main environment support directly, but it supports only limited set of windows programs and only Windows.

Principally you could move your existing copy of Windows to parallels VM, but if it continues to work depends on the type of licensing. Likely the key in Win7 will stop working as MS will find out that the hardware fingerprint of the machine has changed and will disable your license. You can call them and may be they would transfer the license to new machine, it is possible, but depends on origin of your license. If that copy of Windows came with computer, it is OEM version and that cannot be moved around.

Hope this explains it, if you have license issue. If it is something different, well, sorry, did not understand.