How to reinstall Windows into an existing VM image

[Michael Durian]

I have an instance of Windows 10 that for whatever reason couldn't get past the Creators update. Eventually, I decided to do a clean install. I created an ISO update image and used it to update the existing Windows 10 install without preserving applications or files. At what I think was near the end, it looked up. I eventually had to kill parallels and forcibly reboot MacOS.

Now I think the Windows VM image must be corrupt, because it won't boot. I just get a spinning busy indicator and "Starting...".

Because I'll be reinstalling some Windows software that is tied to hardware IDs, I'd like to reinstall over the existing VM image / "computer" instead of creating a new image. How do I do this?

Thanks,
mike

 

[Arun@Parallels]

Hi @Michael Durian , do you get any error message? If yes, please help us with the screenshots.

 

[Michael Durian]

No, there weren't any error messages. Eventually, I restored the VM image from backup and then tried the reinstall again and it succeeded. I don't know why it locked up the first and am no longer in a position where I can try to reproduce it for you.

In general, I feel like this latest version of Parallels isn't as stable as previous versions. For example, if I click on the Windows icon in the task bar when in coherence mode, some times the Windows start menu will appear, sometimes it won't. Some times it appears and then immediately disappears. It's just a minor annoyance, but I never noticed this sort of behavior with previous versions of Parallels.

mike

 

[SteveS18]

Hi @Michael Durian , do you get any error message? If yes, please help us with the screenshots.

I have a similar problem - Parallels starts, then windows starts with a "Hi Steve" messages, the wheel spins and then the Windows window goes from blue to black and stays there indefinitely. No applications work at all. This seems to have started when Windows performed an auto update (Win7!) and I got a message that "this seems to be taking longer than normal..." but the update seemed to terminate normally. Since then I have had this issues. I have backup Windows.pvm files, but I am not sure how to restore them so that the system will work.

Advise?