Parallels will not update...endless loop

Every time I open Parallels, it asks to check for updates. It finds a later version 4.0.3848, then I enter root password, go through the EULA, but it always ends with "Operation could not be completed (com.apple.installer.pagecontroller error -1)

 

Parallels update error...

What is really frustrating is that I turned off the "Auto Update" preferences and it STILL wants to try to update every time I open Parallels, and, usually a few times during the day. If I could just turn off the damn updater I would be happy...but I can't even do that!

The icing on the cake is that Parallels wants me to pay them money to make a support ticket. Pay THEM money so that they can tell me how to fix THEIR broken software? That is just wrong...

I found this in troubleshooting...but none of the "files" they want me to delete exist. I think this problem is different...when I get to the "conflicting virtual machines" page, it just blows away..so fast I can hardly see it.

Resolution
To resolve the problem, please, take the steps below:

1) Start Parallels Desktop, launch the virtual machines in question, start and stop them in ordinary manner. Make sure the status of the machine is shown as "Stopped".

2) If this does not help, please, open the Parallels folder: by default it is placed in one of the following directories

/Users/<you user name>/Documents/
/Users/<you user name>/Library/

3) Find the correspondent virtual machine's folder (Microsoft Windows XP in our example)

4) Delete the files with .mem and .sav extensions

5) Open Terminal application from Finder -> Applications -> Utilities and copy/paste there:

cd Documents

6) Copy/paste the second command

rm -rf .parallels-vm-directory

7) Try to launch the upgrade once again. Now the "Continue" button should be available.