I have loaded XP Home 2nd ED twice with out setting a user password. When staring XP with Parallels, everything is fine until it asked for a user password. I tryied pressing enter,,leaving the password field blank the usual way of loggin without a password, nope it wants a password... I installed the same verson of XP using boot camp without this problem. Anyone have any ideas. This is a brand new MAC mini Dual Core......
That isn't Parallels fault. That is the fault of the WinXP install disc you are using. Let me guess, are you using an OEM disc that came with a PC to install Windows, rather than a standard retail version? In my experience OEM discs will check the hardware of the machine they are being installed onto and if it doubts whether the machine you are using was the one that the OEM disc was sold with, it installs in a different way, hence why the installation works fine in Bootcamp but not in Parallels (where the virtual machine's hardware is considerably different).
Yep you are correct it is an OEM verison, but a generic version, not associated with any brand of computer. So what is the solution? Seems there should be a way... Or are you saying it just won't work, if so guess I'm screwed, because I won't be spending more to get this darn MAC to run real software....
Ok Now I Have Xp Loaded I can't get MS to update my verison of XP says can't certify the copy of the OS. This is my legal copy, what's up with that...?
Likely your XP installation won't activate because you had previously activated with the Boot Camp installation. The XP hardware identification routine thinks you are using different hardware completely, because the virtualized hardware is very, very different than the actual hardware. I am not qualified to speak on the proper course of action, but I had luck explaining the situation to Microsoft when I activated over the phone.
