Let's be clear about this issue:
The reactivation issue ONLY affects people who use their Boot Camp partition as a VM.
Also, this has NOTHING to do with bugs in Parallels or Boot Camp, or the fact that they're both beta versions.
A VM emulates hardware, but it doesn't emulate the same hardware as what's really there. For instance, Parallels emulates a rather basic video card; you can't access the real video card. Boot Camp, on the other hand, gives Windows access to the actual hardware in the computer.
And Windows (Windows XP SP2, anyway, which is required for Boot Camp), BY DESIGN, forces a user to reactivate when it detects a major hardware change. For instance, if you switch out your video card for a better one, you'll have to reactivate your Windows install.
Basically, every time you switch between booting into Boot Camp and booting within Parallels, the Windows installation detects a bunch of major hardware differences (in fact, you tell it to load different hardware profiles when you make those two choices at the text prompt when it loads), and it tells you to reactivate. That's just the way it is. As someone pointed out in another thread, this basically punishes those of us who bought real copies of Windows, since pirated copies likly dispense with reactivation. It's bass-ackwards, but then what do you really expect from Microsoft?
All of the above is simple, unfortunate fact. Question is, what do we do about it?
1) Just keep reactivating every couple days. This frankly isn't such a pain in the neck... as long as Windows lets you keep doing it indefinitely. But can you do that?
2) Get Microsoft to patch Windows to accomodate this... maybe by allowing a Windows install to have two default hardware profiles instead of one, and only asking you to reactivate if it detects some third configuration. maybe they'll do this out of sheer generosity, when they notice the unusually high volume of repeated reactivations. Not likely. Maybe we could send lots of emails, or mention it on all the MS blogs, or - even better! - start a web petition!
3) Let Parallels, the more organized and well-financed organization (financed by us!), lean on MS to issue some kind of patch like that. MS might listen to Parallels, since MS ostensibly gets paid full price for every copy of Windows used in Boot Camp or Parallels, which is a damn sight more profitable than OEM versions.
4) Let Apple, the even better-organized and even better-financed organization (also financed by us!), lean on MS. Apple is big'n'mighty enough that MS might listen to them. And it's in Apple's best interest, since better integration via Boot Camp and Parallels will create more switchers.
5) Hope that Parallels creates some kind of software kludge to deal with it... maybe pester them a bit on their forums.
On a side note, this is kind of an interesting issue. It is in everyone's best interest to make this work better. Good integration between OS X, Parallels, Boot Camp and Windows would clearly benefit all three companies as well as consumers. But it's a collective action problem: who's going to pony up the resources to make it happen?
