Error - Unable to change the virtual machine permissions

What does this mean and how do I fix it? I've attached the dialog I get.

Thanks.

 

Maybe your machine is "locked" and can't be modified by the user. If that's the case you can fix it with the Parallels Command Line utilities. Or you may want to try to repair your permissions.

 

Hello,

Please close the Parallels Desktop application. Now, click on Finder -> Mac Hd -> Users -> Your username -> Documents -> Parallels -> Virtual machine.pvm and right click on it and select get info. Now check the read and write permissions of the file. Now, right-click on the .pvm file and select show package content so that you will find a .hdd file. Right-click on it and check the permissions. Make read and write permissions for all. Now, try to run Parallels desktop.

 

What happens, is that somehow you are lost as the owner. I am running Parallels from the MacBook harddrive, but the VMs are on an external USB drive. Whatever causes the issue, Parallels or Snow Leopard, your ownership is lost. In my case, the whole external drive was affected. I figured it out when Time Machine, also using that drive, said it couldn't write to the drive.

When I did a Get Info on the drive, and looked at the permissions, it said that me, the user, had read and write permissions, staff had read and write permissions, and everyone had read only permissions. All were grayed out. I clicked on the padlock, and unlocked it, but couldn't change any permissions as they remained grayed out.

I ejected the drive, and then remounted it. Everything was fine again. So, somehow, you become "everyone" and loose ownership! Scary.

If the VM's are on your harddrive, I would shutdown, reboot, and run Disk Utility / Repair Permissions on your drive.

Was it Parallels Desktop 5 for Mac? Was it Windows 7? Was it Snow Leopard?

 

Stephen–Thanks, that solved my problem. The setup that became locked is as follows:
-External USB drive with VMs
-VM that was suspended has Windows 7 installed
-My OS is Snow Leopard 10.6.4 running on a late 2009 27" iMac (Core i7) with 8 GB RAM
-Parallels version is 5 with the latest update installed

I just installed the latest Apple Security Update, decided to suspend my Win 7 VM instead of shutting down, rebooted, checked my permissions, then tried to restart the VM. Oddly enough, though, as I write this Time Machine is performing a backup to my other external drive. So, I don't know if this is an issue with any and all external drives and Snow Leopard, or if it's just specific to Parallels' VMs on external drives.