Microsoft Office activation and Windows Backup issues

[absolut3]

First of all, good day to everyone here. im new here and is also a proud new owner of a MBP 13"

now that im the owner of a mbp,i have some questions regarding the above mentioned issues.

firstly is activation of microsoft office 2007. i have set up windows 7 x64 through bootcamp and even installed ms office 2007 and successfully activated it.

then i set up parallels using the windows 7 partition and was hoping for all things to run smoothly. but when i opened ms office, it asked me to activate again?! tried phoning ms but apparently they have no idea what im talking about. i read about changing of mac address but didnt really try it out as i was unsure. so is there any way i can solve this problem?

secondly, its the backing up of windows 7 partition. backing up os x is really easy with time machine. i cant backup windows partition with time machine right?
if so, is backing up directly through windows better or by using winclone? what difference is there? then how about the backing up with parallels? cos i saw the option there of backing up parallels with time machine but i unchecked it.

sorry for the long post

 

[mingoglia]

I didn't realize Microsoft did their Office activation like they do their operating system but it sounds like that's the case here? I've successfully moved my XP vm with Office 2007 from one computer to another and *only* the OS complained. I did the online activation and it was fine. Actually I've done this 3 times. Microsoft ties their activation to the hardware that was used the last time the activation happened. If the hardware changes too much, it will force a new activation. The problem with using a virtual machine is it simulates hardware and not what hardware is currently in your machine. For example, if you sent up your VM with 1 gig of RAM and then later change it to use 4gig of RAM as far as the virtual machine goes you've added 3 more gig of "physical" hardware (since the OS aware it's running on virtual hardware).

If the online activation isn't working I'd just call Microsoft and either tell them you changed the hardware or tell them that you've moved your copy of office to a virtual machine and that you REMOVED the previous copy that may have been running on another machine.

 

[absolut3]

I didn't realize Microsoft did their Office activation like they do their operating system but it sounds like that's the case here? I've successfully moved my XP vm with Office 2007 from one computer to another and *only* the OS complained. I did the online activation and it was fine. Actually I've done this 3 times. Microsoft ties their activation to the hardware that was used the last time the activation happened. If the hardware changes too much, it will force a new activation. The problem with using a virtual machine is it simulates hardware and not what hardware is currently in your machine. For example, if you sent up your VM with 1 gig of RAM and then later change it to use 4gig of RAM as far as the virtual machine goes you've added 3 more gig of "physical" hardware (since the OS aware it's running on virtual hardware).

If the online activation isn't working I'd just call Microsoft and either tell them you changed the hardware or tell them that you've moved your copy of office to a virtual machine and that you REMOVED the previous copy that may have been running on another machine.

ic. so thats the reason why i have to activate it again. thanks for the tip
but i was wondering, how does microsoft check whether i have removed the previous copy until i call them? windows wont send them a msg saying that i have uninstalled on of the copy right?