Can it be that there’s a way to trick Microsoft’s Windows XP Genuine Certificate of Authority install? Well, maybe. Take a look at my Device Manager from my Parallels Desktop install of Windows XP SP2. Note the devices, which Windows uses to make your configuration unique, are all general notations. Meaning, every Parallels install will say the same thing. There really isn’t anything unique about the install accept the Certificate of Authority number and your MAC (Media Access Control) address, here.

So that said, you could basically use the same Windows XP install for your entire home since chances are you won’t be using them all at the same time, thus not setting off the MS Police when it notices different MAC addresses coming from the same NAT IP. Then again, that might not even matter, since this is already a common experience with legit installs from businesses that buy tons of identical PCs by the truckload for their cubicles.

So did SvenOnTech find a loophole in the way Parallels presents XP to Microsoft? Will we be saving you all some cash? We can’t say for sure until we test this out on other Macs. But we can tell you this much: if it does work, then you won’t even have to do multiple installs but rather use the same HDD file for Parallels. How sweet this could be!

We’ll keep you posted on this and if you’ve already tried this, please confirm or deny this report in the comments.

Tags: parallels, desktop, windows, xp, device manager, mac, os x, osx, install, hack