I just cloned a Win 2003 VM inside of Parallels and when I started the cloned machine I was forced to reactivate it. Anyone know why this happened? In the past, I've just physically copied the Parallels files to clone a machine and had no problems. I didn't think the built in clone tool would be any different.
My guess is that the clone would change the MAC address used by the VM's networking layer, causing the the activation to check to get tripped.
You're probably correct. I didn't think of that. However, is this really a clone? When I think of a clone--I think exact copy. In hind site, I should have deleted the clone and just copied the existing machine to a new directory. I clicked the authenticate button without thinking. Oh well, I hope I don't need to authenticate in the future or I'll probably end up call MS to "ask for permission."