Windows XP Pro Activation Acting Weird?!

[mpmendoza]

I finally got the latest Fusion installed and then Windows XP Pro. I entered an old Win XP product key and the installation went fine. The problem is this - after launching Win XP Pro, on the Windows taskbar, I get a message that the copy of Windows has X days to use and I must activate it. When I click on that pop-up message window, the next pop-up says that my Windows is already activated and just click OK. No where do I get a chance to get that screen to allow me to call Microsoft for manual telephone activation. This happens all the time after I reboot the VM?!

So somehow, the Win XP VM acts that is it not activated and activated simultaneously?! I am afraid that it will actually shut down and be inoperative after the 30 days?!

Does anyone have a fix to this?! I have tried a number of different Win XP product keys, to no avail?!?!

Appreciate anyone's help on this!

[zdkd]

Me too. I'm not surprised every time VMware publishes an update it requires a re-activation. It's rediculous, now I have to call up MS. I don't have this problem with Parallels. Unfortunately I own a license for both. So, I feel obliged to use VMware. This is the second time I've had to do this because of an update. I won't be making this mistake again!

[admin]

I'm not surprised every time VMware publishes an update it requires a re-activation.

Updating Fusion should not require reactivation. Updating the virtual hardware might, but this is not mandatory and is irrelevant for Fusion 1.1 and 1.1.1 because they use the same virtual hardware version as Fusion 1.0. I'm not sure why you are asked to reactivate, but wanted to let you know this is not expected or common behavior.

[mpmendoza]

Thanks for the reply and comment.

I FINALLY got it to work (after 7 reinstalls?!). I don't know what it was but after the 7th try it was fine! After a painful Activation process, my XP PRo VM is working just fine. Just to share some more info on this. My imAc was brand new, new install of Fusion from 1.0 and then I uninstalled that, downloaded the latest version and installed it, and my system has 3 GB of RAM. I never had XP on Boot Camp as I mentioned that my iMac is new, so I don't have the complexity of trying to run off or convert from that.

After the activation was resolved, I was able to install MS Office 2003 Pro & Cisco VPN for work and everything worked flawlessly!

I think VMWare can alleviate a lot of this initial pain by publishing in-depth guidelines on Windows activation, instructions, and troubleshooting guide.

I have read a number of horror stories in their forums of all kinds of activation issues. I would hope that they are not "deaf" to this particular issue!

[admin]

We'll do whatever we can to help, and I sure hope we're not deaf to any issues.

But if Windows is refusing to activate in a VM, that's really a Windows problem and not a VMware problem, as far as I can tell.

Now, if just upgrading between Fusion versions without upgrading virtual hardware (which, as Eric says, isn't an issue between any Fusion versions to date anyway) causes the VM to want to reactivate, that is our problem and I'd appreciate hearing more data about it.

Note that any/all of the following can cause the VM to see that virtual hardware has changed, and one of these changes alone won't trigger Windows to reactivate, but a combination of the below will:

- moving the VM's files (to a new location on your Mac, or to a different Mac), and answering "I copied it" instead of "I moved it"

- moving the VM to a different Mac with a different CPU model

- changing the amount of memory assigned to the VM

- adding/removing hardware to/from the VM

If you did that, it's possible for Windows to notice and want to reactivate. If you didn't do that, but did upgrade Fusion, and Windows wanted to reactivate, something is wrong and we'd like to hear more about it. If Windows wanted to reactivate and fails, we'd like to hear about that too, but honestly that problem probably lies in Microsoft's domain and not ours.