Is there a fix for the WinXP/officeXP reactivation cycle with bootcamp/3036?

Hi!

All works fine with the beta, i can use the Bootcamp Mode and i can use the VM-Mode, even the coherent runs fine.

But everytime i switc, i get the "3 days for reactivation" with WinXP and i have to reactivate Office due to changes in my hardware.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

Raolin

 

Do a SEARCH. There are a lot of posts about this at the moment. Seems like it is a Microsoft anti-piracy issue, and not a Parallels issue. The corporate version doesn't have this problem though.

 

Hi Jerry,

in fact i did a lot of searches. I was just askin, whether the status of this issue has changed in any way. Not everybody has access to a corporate edition, in fact i think you will find a lot more professional or even home editions.
Ans - right now MS told me on the phone - as i tried again to activate XP Prof and Office PProf that they wil not elp me so often again with activation. So i think this is a major problem and finally it will render the dual use (in bootcamp ND in parallels) useless and the user will have to decide one of both (activated) to avoid further activation cycles.
It is complete clear that this is not a parallels issue but a MS issue, but you can bet that MS will definetly not help us with that.
So it depends on Parallels or the community ...

Thanks

Raolin

 

There is one brief reply from Parallels on another thread that says that they are "working on this problem".

What nobody seems to know is whether (a) Parallels had a cunning plan to work around this issue that is failing to work in some cases (i.e. its a bug and may well be fixed) or (b) they didn't, in which case unless you have a corporate site license copy of windows that doesn't use product activation, this feature is as much use as an inflatable dartboard.

Unfortunately since (a) is not only a technical challenge but would be "legally brave" in the face of all that nasty new legislation about breaking security devices, and in the absense of any other information, "Least hypothesis" at the moment is (b).

 

Guys,

We are aware of infinite loop of reactivations for some Boot Camp configurations. We are investigating the problem and will provide a solution in next Beta. If you encounter this problem please avoid using Boot Camp from Parallels until we come with a fix.

I apologize for inconvinience!

 

I have the 1970 version of Parallels and it's really quite good. I'm a long time Bootcamp user and look forward to the new capabilities this new version offers, but until it's stable (and I trust they're working hard on it) I'll wait for the official release.

Thanks guys

 

As a quick fix, instead of constantly reactivating (and possibly exceeding the allowed activations) is it possible to save the activation files (wpa.dbl and wpa.bak) both for the Parallels install and for BootCamp? I haven't tried this yet - I was wondering if others had?

Carl

 

Any ideas how that would be possible?

 

"Any ideas how that would be possible?"

The link in my previous post describes doing this for a single WinXP install. If these files were saved prior to running the Parallels beta, then the beta run and XP reactivated, and then the files saved again, you should have two versions of the activation files. These could be simply copied back to their directory without having to go through the activation process again. But I haven't tried it so I can't say for sure.

Carl

 

Agreed. I have just purchased a Parallels license and am currently using the 1970 build. That works fine on my Core 2 Macbook so far. But I do not see how you can solve this reactivation problem, to be sure. It will be nice if you can really do that.

 

Do Not Try This...just For Discussion!!!

not sure if the files would break if you tar them. the originals have unknown owner/group...while expanded tar archive shows current logged in user/group own them. i'm guessing these permissions don't matter within windows...dunno.

check permissions on the two original files

# ls -lFa /Volumes/Untitled/WINDOWS/system32/ | grep "wpa."
-rwxr-xr-x 1 unknown unknown 12K Dec 2 22:45 wpa.bak*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 unknown unknown 12K Dec 5 23:11 wpa.dbl*​

now archive the two files to your desktop...watch carriage return...should be one line

sudo tar -cvf ~/Desktop/preserve_activation.tar /Volumes/Untitled/WINDOWS/system32/wpa.bak /Volumes/Untitled/WINDOWS/system32/wpa.dbl​

open archive and check permissions on unarchived files

# tar -xf ~/Desktop/preserve_activation.tar
# ls -lFa ~/Desktop/Volume/Untitled/WINDOWS/system32/ | grep "wpa."
-rwxr-xr-x 1 montalvd montalvd 12K Dec 2 22:45 wpa.bak*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 montalvd montalvd 12K Dec 5 23:11 wpa.dbl*​

...if permissions aren't an issue, maybe parallels can give us a script (or built in function) that archives the activation files and on demand extracts files allowing to overwrite broken activation files? i'm sure there's some concern over piracy issues (not so much whether we're pirating...but rather that we're breaking anti-piracy on a product...even though this can only work on the same exact machine).

could look something like this...PLEASE DO NOT TRY THIS!!!...THIS IS ONLY FOR DISCUSSION!!!!

# tar -xf ~/Desktop/preserve_activation.tar /Volume/Untitled/WINDOWS/system32/​

don

 

No, I do not believe that the permissions matter in Windows, but as with everything else in Windows, the only way to really know what would happen would be to try it and see for yourself.

Which I am not suggesting that anyone do.

 

there's a workaround here... i think the official fix will have to come from MS or Parallels.

http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?p=33376#post33376