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Decided to erase Bootcamp and Use Parallels...now can't activate Windows 7

D

DeLoMan

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 6, 2008
219
43
This has me furious now...I decided that rebooting everytime I wanted to use W7 was a giant pain. So I bought Parallels, installed Windows 7 via the upgrade method (since you can't upgrade XP in Parallels, I had to install W7 twice, upgrading the 2nd time.) Now, it won't let me activate my copy of Windows, probably because I activated it on bootcamp yesterday before erasing that partition today.

Any suggestions? I'd prefer to go about this the correct way, rather than registry hacks, etc.
 
I kind of think you can activate W7 over the phone, too.
Which shouldn't pose a problem, since you're likely to own a valid licence.

It's still odd. Usually you can just activate a couple of times more than once.
I'd give MS a call.
 
acurafan said:
call MS activation - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/326851

tell them you needed to reinstall (for whatever reason) and need to re-activate. they should give you a new key.
Click to expand...

Thanks acurafan. Just got off the phone with a woman in India. She appologized and said there is nothing they can do about running Windows on a Mac and that I should see a local specialist. I'm getting angrier now. :mad:
 
DeLoMan said:
Thanks acurafan. Just got off the phone with a woman in India. She appologized and said there is nothing they can do about running Windows on a Mac and that I should see a local specialist. I'm getting angrier now. :mad:
Click to expand...

Sometimes you need to keep the details to yourself. Just call again and leave out the Mac part. Just tell them that your hard drive or motherboard died and that you need to reactivate.
 
I got it working using the advice from another forum that I think I'll share here for anyone else with this problem. My error code was 0xC004C008.

This is how I activated it (Thanks to Ronnie Vernon on Microsoft's Forums):

"Regardless of what caused the problem, you can get this computer activated. Follow these steps.

1. Press the Windows Logo Key+R. This will bring up the Run dialog box.

2. In the Open: box, type slui 4 and press OK. This will start the manual activation wizard.

3. Select your Country in the drop down menu and click Next.

4. The wizard will display a Toll Free phone number. Leave the wizard open on the computer and call that phone number.

Follow any of the recorded instructions. If this activation fails, stay on the line until a live Activation Representative answers. The representative will manually activate that system for you."
 
pknoot said:
Can you describe what is happening? Is it rejecting the key? What is your error message?
Click to expand...

He activated Windows in Parallels. When he switched to Bootcamp Windows is not allowing him to re-activate using the same key. This is pretty standard and just requires a quick call to get a new key. Where the OP messed up is mentioning the word Mac. This does not compute. :p
 
I had a similar issue this evening. I installed on bootcamp but could not get VirtualBox to use the bootcamp version, dispite following some commands I'd found on the VirtualBox Web Site.

So I reinstalled windows. It didn't like the activation code and gave me the option of ringing the automatic telephone line. I then had to enter in a load of numbers via my phone, which were displayed on screen. Then I had to enter in the numbers Microsoft gave me over the phone.

Once this was done the activation was approved and I could delete my bootcamp partition.

Then I encountered a driver problems using VirtualBox, which had not occurred when I was using BootCamp but that's possibly another topic, if I don't resolve it myself before hand.
 
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