I don't know if this solution has been posted on the forums, but I can't find it in search so I hope not. We have been using Parallels at work and installing it for clients wanting to run Sage and the like for a while. While the addition of the BootCamp booting isn't skirt lifting to us it's useful as a backup way to access the Windows OS. Issue What we found however was that sometimes we simply couldn't open the BootCamp installation in Parallels and the radial button was greyed out in the configuration view. Solution Since then we figured it out; it's because we had the FireWire backup drive plugged in. It seems that whether you plug it in before starting the machine or Parallels, during a Parallels boot or between Parallels boots it simply freezes things up. Restart without the drive plugged in and don't plug it in and job done. It's a pain when you want to backup overnight and it takes restarts but hey, it works. I'm not sure as the exact nature of the problem, and it will take some time to test further but the setup is currently as follows which causes this issue: Setup * iMac 24" - fully updated, 2 partitions (OS X and BootCamp) * Parallels build 3036 * Windows XP Pro SP2 in BootCamp (latest version from this week) * Parallels tools installed properly * FW800 250GB External HDD with 2 partitions (Mac Backup and XP Backup Sorry if this has been posted, I couldn't find it but I think it's an interesting problem to have. I got the way of thinking from another post about the number of partitions on the primary disk causing issues.
