Add VMs to Parallels list?!

Okay... I had to move some VMs off of my laptops disk onto an external drive for storage reasons. I can open these VMs and run them if I open the .pvs file, which will launch Parallels. I can even change the settings if I hold down the apple key while opening the .pvs file, and Parallels will not auto-start it (why does it auto-start it in the first place? quite annoying)

However, the problem is that now if i just try to launch Parallels, it gives me the annoying OS installation screen, and if I click Cancel? Parallels closes.

So the question is, how can I a.) go into Parallels without that god awful annoying OS installation screen and just be able to change application preferences, etc, without first having to launch a VM b.) Add VMs to the list that used to show up, which would prompt me to select a VM to start upon Launching Parallels?

Any feedback or hints are much appreciated.

 

Hello,

please try in 'Select Operating System installation mode' choose 'Custom'. At a certain point choose 'Use an existing hard disk image' and then choose a path to your existing .hdd file.

Best regards,
Stacey

 

Thanks for the fast reply!

Unfortunately, when I start Parallels I'm still given the "OS Installation Assistant" prompt, despite having gone through the custom setup. Is there any other way to get something added to the list?

 

Hello,

could you please open Terminal and tell me the output of the following command:
ls -la /Users/<your user name>/Documents/.parallels-vm-directory/

Best regards,
Stacey

 

You are awesome! There were a bunch of broken symbolic links in there, so I just removed them all and recreated the few that work and now my virtual machine list works perfectly, whenever I start Parallels. Thanks for the help!

btw, in case you wanted the output:

chilltown:~ paul$ ls -la ~/Documents/.parallels-vm-directory/
total 256
drwxr-xr-x 12 paul 501 408 Sep 25 16:41 .
drwx------+ 87 paul 501 2958 Dec 4 22:04 ..
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root 501 31 Nov 20 22:39 Inglewood 1 -> /Users/paul/Inglewood/winxp.pvs
-rw-r--r--@ 1 paul 501 0 Nov 2 14:10 Microsoft Windows XP
-rw-r--r--@ 1 paul 501 0 Dec 22 2006 Microsoft Windows XP.pvs
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root 501 37 Nov 20 22:39 Thinkpad T42 -> /Volumes/400GB/Thinkpad T42/winxp.pvs
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root 501 47 Nov 20 22:39 Ubuntu -> /Users/paul/Library/Parallels/Ubuntu/Ubuntu.pvs
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root 501 60 Nov 20 22:39 winxp.pvs -> /Users/paul/Library/Parallels/Microsoft Windows XP/winxp.pvs

chilltown:~ paul$ cd ~/Documents/.parallels-vm-directory/
chilltown:.parallels-vm-directory paul$ rm *
chilltown:.parallels-vm-directory paul$ ls
chilltown:.parallels-vm-directory paul$ ln -s /Users/paul/Library/Parallels/winxp/winxp.pvs winxp