Blank screen after converting from VMWare Fusion 3

[MattOlson]

Hello,

I am trying to move and convert a VMWare Fusion 3.1.2 Windows XP image from one machine to Parallels Desktop For Mac 6.0.11990 on another.

I have tried two different approaches, neither one of which worked:
(1) Copying the vmware image to the destination machine and using the conversion built into the File...Open command
(2) Using transporter agent on the source VM and migrating over the network to the destination machine.

In both cases, the first part of the conversion appears to work correctly, but at a certain stage I am told that I need to log into Windows to finish the conversion and install Parallels Tools. At this stage, the screen goes black and nothing further seems to be happening. I have left it going for over 2 days and nothing changes.

At first I thought maybe the video driver wasn't working. However, I made sure to uninstall VMWare Tools from the source VM before migration, so there shouldn't be any VMWare specific drivers installed.

I really want to run Parallels on my new computer, and want this conversion to work, but right now I am frustrated and at a loss as to how to debug this problem.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Matt

 

[MattOlson]

A little more information

I have discovered from tailing parallels.log that during the "stage 1" screen of the conversion, the virtual machine seemed to be rebooting over and over again. So I found out about "manual configuration mode" -- if you hit ctrl-option-cmd-R during the conversion, you can enter a manual configuration in which you log into the vm in order for conversion to proceed.

I entered manual configuration mode for kicks and Windows experienced a stop error (i.e. blue screen of death) with the following error DRIVER_UNLOADED_WITHOUT_CANCELLING_PENDING_OPERATION on processr.sys. I assume this is what's happening during the first stage of the conversion since the vm is continually rebooting itself.

Not sure what to do about this.

 

[MattOlson]

Problem solved

OK, here's how I solved the problem:

(1) From original VMWare image, go to device manager and remove every device you can. Some of them say that they require reboot to uninstall, if so don't reboot just yet. Go through the whole list and right click each item and select Uninstall. It is not enough to just remove VMWare Tools.
(2) Follow this tip: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2005/10/24/484461.aspx by going into regedit and changing the Start value for processr.sys and intelppm.sys to 4.
(3) Change the way Windows logs in. If you have password protection on your account, go into the control panel and remove it temporarily. This allows Parallels to configure the machine without requiring you to log in.
(4) Transfer the .vmwarevm bundle to the new machine and use the File..Open command to convert it.

This worked for me and I'm finally able to log in to my converted image.