Cannot remove a virtual machine

[Phillip bowl]

I installed Paralles desktop 6 on my Mac, and created a virtual machine Windows Xp.
Every thing worked fine, but when I shut down the computer, and re-started the next day, the virtual machine appears in the list, but it will not start, I get a message that the files for this machine do not exist or have been deleted.
So I tried to remove the VM, and I get the message that the VM is busy and cannot be removed. I then inserted the Parallels disk and tried an uninstall, but I get a message that the VM is running, and please stop the VM and try again, I am going in circles trying to either run the VM, or uninstall the Paralles application and I get nowhere. HELP!!!!

 

[backflip]

I'm having the same problem with a Windows 7 VM I somehow managed to crash.

 

[Phillip bowl]

What I had to do, is download Parallels from the internet and used that to uninstall parallels. once you uninstall, you then can remove the VM and then reinstall Parallels and start over. Follow this link:http://www.parallels.com/download/desktop/, good luck
Phil

 

[Kathleen R]

How are you shutting down?

Assuming 6 is similar to 5. I'm running Windows 7 in Bootcamp as a virtual machine. I've learned that when I want to shut down I first have to go in to the virtual machine & go through the windows shutdown procedure. Then when windows is shut down I can close the VM & quit Parallels. Several times i tried to quit parallels without first shutting down windows & it didn't like it.

 

[Kathleen R]

Did you try shutting down & let it rest a bit & then try booting up again? I've gotten intermittent messages, not quite the same but somewhat similar. But when I know that it should be ok, I just think, well maybe its messed up right now so I'll shut down & then after a bit re-boot & often that will fix it.

I would ALWAYS try this 1st before doing something more drastic like removing or reinstalling. This is a very old computer remedy. When things are acting funny, shut down & then re-start. I've also found that sometimes just a restart isn't enough for the volitile (temporary) memory to go away. I don't really understand it but apparently sometimes when computers are doing their thing, bits of stuff get left behind in memory & can cause problems. Removing power from the memory allows them to go away & sometimes fixes things. Its sure worth a try before more drastic things. I did that a week or so ago after resetting Safari & removing its caches & other caches at the direction of Apple care resulted in Parallels & then bootcamp being messed up. Shut down, went away for a half hr or so, came back, booted into bootcamp (which I use as my virtual machine also) it worked. I opened other programs there then shut down & then went to the mac side & booted, then opened Parallels & it was working ok. I apparently do need to update to the latest build so getting ready to do that.