I installed Parallels some time ago and used Windows 10 license that I purchased. All went fine. My problem is every time Apple has a major OS release (Mojave -> Catalina) I always format my drive and do a clean install. After I install Parallels and install Windows, I enter the Windows license key and it won't accept it. It says it's already installed on another computer. I talked to Microsoft, they told me they would reset the license, but will not continue to do so in the future. Is there any way around this. Is there some way to save the licensing for a virtual machine so when I do a clean install it will remember the license?
If you have a large enough, external HD, you can copy the VM HD to it as a backup so when you do install MacOS again cleanly, you won't have to reinstall Windows. Windows has only a certain amount of installs it accepts/license key so you may have reached that if you constantly install Windows in a VM whenever you wipe your MacHD. I strongly suspect the fact that I upgraded to Cataline w/o doing a clean install is causing some system instability with PD15... if I load up a VM, my mac will randomly reboot with a kernel panic. Only seems to do it if I happen to load up a VM through PD15. I should seriously think about doing a clean install of Catalina seeing as it no longer supports 32bit apps.
Thank you very much for your response. I do have a large external HD. When you say "copy VM HD" to an external HD, is it a folder? I don't currently have Parallels installed to be able to look for it. Also, after I do a clean install, do I just copy the "VM HD" folder back into Parallels and it will work, or does it need to be imported into Parallels?
Hi, you can try to deactivate the Windows license (before installing your new vm and Windows os activation) Have you already try this?
Thank you for the reply. I did try to deactivate/activate but it did not work. Still gave me the same error when I tried to activate. Maybe I did it wrong. I asked Microsoft tech support and he told me there was no way to activate/deactivate Windows. I will try it again next time. I probably just typed something wrong. Thanks.
The file to copy is the .pvm file. By default, this is in a folder named Parallels in your user Documents folder.
