Crash - Want to reinstall XP but VM is still on HD

Crash - It Wants to reinstall XP but VM is still on HD!

Just purchased Parallels for my uncle so he could play poker with XP. It ran great installed great. He put it into that mode by accident that merged it with the Mac OS and couldn't get it to stop. We had to force quit.

Once we rebooted and tried to load parallels it tried to ask us to reinstall XP, even though the VM is still located on the hard drive!

Is there a way to recover and why did it lose its install? Please help, I don't want to have to go back all the way there to reinstall for him... sigh

 

First step is
Permissions repair on mac using Disk Utilities

 

I actually did..

But ultimately I reinstalled parallels and had it import a VM. It worked, but the graphics when playing party poker (that is all he is usuing xp for) would get all glitchy. I increased the memory and the video memory and still the same results.

So I wiped it completely, wiped parallels completely reinstalled and reinstalled XP from scratch again. Installed party poker, I did select use directx, and I did install directx on the virtual machine (this is xp sp1).

So this was a brand new install and it works but the graphics are still all glitchy.

The problem is.. when we first installed xp and ran party poker and other programs there were no graphical glitches at all with default settings. Once it crashed and lost the ability to launch parallels into that VM and we proceeded to reinstall etc.. it never has worked since.

This is ultimately frustrating. I have tried to run the disk repair.

This is pretty much a brand new top of the line 24inch screen mac. He hasn't installed any software on this except office, and VNC for me to remote into.

 

be sure that you enable directx support into VM configuration editor.

also i think you should provide Parallels support about that issue, provide them with crash log files:
files from /Library/Parallels/bugreports/;

steps to reproduce;

/Library/Logs/panic.log or ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/Parallels.crash.log from the Mac side;

All content from the %SystemRoot%\Minidump (usually C:\Windows\Minidump).

I think they help you, at least they possibly can provide you with reasons of crash. ;-)

 

Ok so this means that:you're running Leopard 10.5.3?

Also which build of Parallels are you running? 5600 for example?

 

10.5.3 yes. Completely up to date. This mac is like 2 months old.

5584 parallels downloaded it 2 weeks ago and purchased. First time it installed everything worked well.

The thing does not crash, that is my point. It is just graphical glitches like certain things flash and are being drawn in a really odd way, almsot like virbrating. Sometimes like when a mouse pointer can leave trails too.

 

Directx is enabled. I even installed it in the windows xp virtual machine.

Looks like my uncle has submitted like 20 bugreports to them every time his screen inw indows starts to wig out.

I checked there are no logs. It doesn't crash or anything. Party poker and some times other things the graphics start to flash other parts of the screen on there. No idea why.

 

I am not sure exactly what party poker software you are using, but as far as I remember , some of our clients are using partypoker.net software without problem, I can suggest you following steps:
1. Minimize hardware acceleration level in display properties.

Right click on Desktop -> Personalize -> Display Settings -> Advanced
Settings -> Trobleshoot tab. Put hardware acceleration level to zero.

2. Set Color in Display Settings to 24 bit making hardware acceleration
set to maximum.

this is a first way,

Another way, try to Disable DirectX Shaders, and try that software in single window mode

 

The reason I ask is that there has been some graphic glitches with 10.5.3 that were solved with a later build of Parallels. I believe the current official release is 5608.

 

Last build is 5608, yes and this fixed problems after 10.5.3 update

 

Oh well can someone link to the update?

 

http://download.parallels.com/v3/en/GA/Parallels-Desktop-5608-Mac-en.dmg

 

Forget it I see why it wasn't updating. he did purchase the upgrade/updates for a year or whatever, but it was never registered. Even though i thought we did register it.

So it is updating I'll let you know if this fixes the problem.. in any likely hood thanks for the help!

 

Please use link provided, we have some issues with autoupdate in several states

 

So far so good, he hasn't complained yet. So I think it fixed it. Thanks!

 

Now if we could only get pkr.com to work