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re-authorizing windows very time you change a setting on parallels??

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itsjustmeee

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Dec 28, 2008
602
7
So my parallels windows xp virtual machine transferred over to my new Macbook Pro with no problem and interestingly enough, not having to re-authorizing it. But today when I was messing with the configuration options in parallels to try to optimize it for my new i5 and went from one core to two, I got the "you have to contact microsoft to authorize" BS. So is it the case where every time you change or tweak the settings in Parallels, windows sees it as a new computer and you have to contact Microsoft??

Does anyone know how to get around that, or is that just the way it is with virtual windows running on a mac?
 
maflynn

maflynn

macrumors Haswell
May 3, 2009
73,481
43,407
i use vmware and I recall reading a note that changing some configurations will cause you to reauthorize your copy of windows. Memory and/or number of cores were the two items being listed.

changing the number of cores causes windows to think you're on a new/different computer because you cannot easily add/modify the number of cores on a real physical computer, so the logic within MS activation procedure kicks it out.

Unless you want to drag down the performance of OSX, I'd recommend you give your windows only 1 core and leave the other for OSX. Just my $.02
 
balamw

balamw

Moderator emeritus
Aug 16, 2005
19,366
979
New England
maflynn said:
Unless you want to drag down the performance of OSX, I'd recommend you give your windows only 1 core and leave the other for OSX. Just my $.02
Click to expand...
The i5s are 2 core, 4 thread boxes, right? (at least my i5 Dell is). So in this case does 1 core mean 1 thread or 2? (i.e. 3 or 2 threads left for OS X).

Hyperthreading. So much fun!

B
 
I

itsjustmeee

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Dec 28, 2008
602
7
Well, under the setting "CPU", it has "number of CPUs 1 to 5, so my guess is that parallels can divide the cores. That's why I wanted to see if I could distribute the load a bit better. It's good that it takes a snapshot, so I just went back to before I tried to make the change and have to re-authorize.

I'm sure it won't be a problem, because I do have a real copy of windows and the version I'm using is authorized now, I've just used up my 3 authorizations on my computers and I'll have to do the phone thing and probably have to talk to someone to explain the Parallels situation. I'm pretty sure they hear that quite often!
 
balamw

balamw

Moderator emeritus
Aug 16, 2005
19,366
979
New England
itsjustmeee said:
Well, under the setting "CPU", it has "number of CPUs 1 to 5, so my guess is that parallels can divide the cores.
Click to expand...

IIRC also from VMWare is that the "CPU" setting in the VM can be set to exceed the number of processors/threads the physical box can actually do, it just won't be very efficient.

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