Permanent License Key Not Accepted After Upgrading to New Mac

Hello,

I have an official Parallels Desktop 18 Standard perpetual license.

I migrated from my old MacBook Air to a new MacBook Air M5 using Apple's Migration Assistant.

My old Mac still runs Parallels Desktop 18.3.4 normally.

My new Mac also runs Parallels Desktop 18.3.4.

I am signed into the same Parallels account.

My license appears in My Account, but activation fails with the message:

"Old activation key has not been accepted by the license server."

Could you please reset or release my activation?

Thank you.

 

Hi,
Yeah, Apple's Migration Assistant always messes up license activations like this. Even though everything copied over perfectly, your new Mac has a completely different hardware ID, so the license server thinks you are trying to run the same key on two machines at the same time.
Have you tried completely signing out of your account on the old MacBook Air first? Just closing the app won't release the slot. You need to go to the top menu, click on Parallels Desktop > Account, and explicitly log out there. After that, log out on your new Mac, give it a quick restart, and try to sign back in.
If that doesn't trigger the activation automatically, you will just have to wait for a Parallels support mod to manually clear the old machine from their backend database. They are usually pretty quick to handle these resets.