Windows 7: Activation in Parallels

I bought a student copy and installed it from the a DVD made form the student download. While my friend was able to clean install on his machine no problem, when I try to install into boot camp then validate with the Key it says the student key is an upgrade key. Any idea why? My friend who did a clean install on his computer had no such issues. Thanks!

Did your friend use Boot Camp?

yes, and had no problems. should there be a fundamental difference?

i may have found the problem. parallels 4 only supports 32 bit, and i have a 64 bit version of windows 7

I guess there was a fundamental difference...

I have been struggling for two days with the same issue. I also made a bootable DVD of Windows 7 64-bit from my student download. My observations:

1) I can get it to install fine under Boot Camp.

2) I try installing it under Parallels 4.0 (Build 3848) and get stuck on activation -- it says my product key is not valid.

However, through a highly-convoluted effort, I migrated my Boot Camp partition to Parallels and got it working (at least for a while and then I somehow broke it messing with the configuration). I am in the process of trying again.

So it does seem that 64-bit Windows 7 will run on Parallels...