Import from VirtualBox - Now license and disk space issues

J

JamesM7

Bit poster
It was a pretty pain-free process to import from Virtualbox. I thought that I would need to Export to OFV/OVA first, but Parallels couldn't read that file, instead it chose to import directly from the Oracle Virtualbox file on my Mac. Just that both processes took some time. Enough time that I started each and then went to bed, with the hopes of working on the conversion the next day when I got home from work.

I'd been running Win10 for about a year via Virtualbox. It was upgraded from Win7 > Win8 > Win8.1 > Win10. The installation license from Win7 upgraded through all iterations. With Parallels it asking me to Activate my copy of Windows. I know where I saved the license key but I wasn't expecting to have to do that. Is that normal behavior?

Additionally, the installation of Windows was allocated a 25GB HDD when I set it up on Virtualbox. The Parallels VM has decided that the files on the Windows GuestOS consumes an additional 4GB which means that the software that I wanted to install (which was my reason to moving to Parallels in the first place) will no longer have enough drive space unless I reallocate more drive space. Is the unexplained consumption of drive space normal? I think I removed all the synced files from Mac/Windows. The feature is helpful but also an annoyance.

If I have to allocate more space, FINE. Is there a way to do it painlessly? I've read on this forum about others having drive allocation problems & questions.

I'm on day 3 of the 15 day trial period. Can anyone help a N00b?
 
The reactivating is normal behavior. This has nothing to do with Parallels. Microsoft coded Windows to detect when hardware "changes significantly". While most hardware is virtual in virtual machines, the vendor of course uses different drivers. So the change from VBox to Parallels, of course, is a "hardware" change. This is expected and not something Parallels can fix w/o going into the gray legal area of circumventing Windows Activation.

Parallels drive allocation is actually dynamic (you can set it to 128gb of space, but only say 20gb of it will be used physically on the Mac). There really isn't any reason to limit yourself to 25gb, you'll run into these issues continuously. 4GB seems like a lot, but I can imagine it's differences in software, drivers, etc. So very possible. Are you running out of space on the Mac, or the windows machine is running out of space?

Reallocating drive space is a little complicated because windows needs to be repartitioned to "see" the new space. Parallels does a good job of this, but because there are a billion different combinations of how your hardware, software, registery, drive are set up, it's possible things go wrong. I recommend backup the entire VM first, but to expand do this:

1) Make sure you don't have snapshots. Either roll them back or commit them.
2) Make sure the virtual machine is off / shut down (suspending or pausing doesn't count, must be off)
3) Right click the virtual machine in question and click configure
4) Click hardware
5) Click hard disk (if you have more than one, click the one you want to expand)
6) Click Edit
7) I'd probably make sure "expanding disk" is checked. This is what I meant earlier where windows can see a bigger disk than what space is actually being used
8) Move the slider or enter a new size (maybe 64gb?) in the box
9) Click apply, it should change the partition too

Let me know if that works.
 
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