[njuyhb]

I am experimenting with using the free version of fusion to load windows on my boot camp partition. The activation of windows appears to be okay, but office 2002 is having problems. I activated it within windows natively (e.g., under boot camp), but when I try to run an office app from within fusion, it tells me I need to reactivate it; and, when I do so, I get a message that it was already been activated for another computer, so I can't activate it. Has anyone else run into this problem? Is there a work around?

Next up, I'm going to want to install and activate visual studio 2005. I would like to be able to use visual studio both under boot camp and under fusion. Is this not going to be possible?

[Cold Warrior]

http://forums.macnn.com/alternative-os-reference/

The reference threads in the link above have some good info on activation issues.

[njuyhb]

Those threads mention activating XP, but not activating software such as Office or visual studio. My googling thus far has turned up that there's supposed to be some way to change your mac address (either under the boot camp windows or vmware windows, not sure which one) that solves this problem. But, I am still not able to make it work.

[seanc]

So are you booting your Boot Camp partition in Fusion? I haven't played with Fusion or Boot Camp, but I imagine the hardware looks different to the OS and Apps when booted in either mode, which is why the activation won't be going through.

Since you are using it legally installed on one computer, you could always ring the automated activation line and activate it that way.