Windows Product Key Weirdness In Parallels

[Ryand123]

So last night I purchased Windows 11 Pro for Parallels now that that's an option with Apple Silicon Macs. I activate it with the product key. All was apparently right with the world.

Today when I click on Paralells it says I need to download Windows 11. Okay....I thought I already had but I went ahead with it. But now it says I'm not activated and when I type in the product key it says that was already used on another device.

Now......this might just be wrong because in settings it does say Windows 11 Pro. And at the bottom under product key it has a bunch of X's and the last five characters which do match my product key. So I feel like it is now running the full fledged Windows 11 Pro, but how do I get it to recognize me as activated?

It's also acting different than before. I have dark mode enabled after dark in MacOS and now Windows is recognizing that it seems. Magic Mouse gestures now work--sort of. And even though Parallels always said optimized for retina, I'd almost swear it looks better now, indistinguishable from MacOS whereas before it was probably a bit fuzzier.

 

[xraydoc]

So last night I purchased Windows 11 Pro for Parallels now that that's an option with Apple Silicon Macs. I activate it with the product key. All was apparently right with the world.

Today when I click on Paralells it says I need to download Windows 11. Okay....I thought I already had but I went ahead with it. But now it says I'm not activated and when I type in the product key it says that was already used on another device.

Now......this might just be wrong because in settings it does say Windows 11 Pro. And at the bottom under product key it has a bunch of X's and the last five characters which do match my product key. So I feel like it is now running the full fledged Windows 11 Pro, but how do I get it to recognize me as activated?

It's also acting different than before. I have dark mode enabled after dark in MacOS and now Windows is recognizing that it seems. Magic Mouse gestures now work--sort of. And even though Parallels always said optimized for retina, I'd almost swear it looks better now, indistinguishable from MacOS whereas before it was probably a bit fuzzier.

It's possible some settings you changed after installing and activating Windows is making Windows think it's on a different piece of hardware (the virtualized system). You can go through the re-activation process -- there's a way to tell Windows you're re-activating on different or modified hardware. I don't recall the exact process but it's in there somewhere. I had a developer release of Windows registered but I was unable to get off the dev. channel, so I made a new VM and redownloaded a clean, release version of Windows, and I was able to navigate to a point where I could reactivate with the same product code but indicate that the old machine registration was to be de-registered.

Google should help.

 

[Ryand123]

Well my second attempt with Microsoft was the charm. Was able to activate it over the phone.