Can't Open VM!!!

bobbyt

bobbyt

Hunter
I suspended a WinXP VM, logged out & back in & now every time I open parallels it tells me that the vm is already in use and cannot be opened!!!

I cannot override to get it open, as the only options I can choose is 'new' & 'cancel', both of which do me absoltuely no good... I'm basically stuck and cannot do anything to get into the VM!!!

What's worse is that I properly suspended the VM & let parallels save it, so whatever it thinks is happening is happening for no good reason...
 
Rebooting fixed it...

Odly enough, I tried deleting the .sav file to begin with before rebooting and it had no effect. Logging out & in had no effect. ONLY a reboot was able to fix it...

Of course, being I was resuming in Coherence mode, it blue screened upon the comletion of the load.. :/
 
Dangit....

This time I shut the VM down completely, logged out & logged back in, and again it's doing the same thing...

This is stupidly annoying...

Anyway this is the full error:



Virtual machine Windows XP cannot be opened since it is already used in another Parallels Desktop window.


It is not use in any other desktop window, as there is no other possible desktop window it can be in... So once again I will need to reboot... As far as I can tell, if you run a VM, exit the VM in any manner (suspend or shut the dang thing down), then log out & log back in, Paralells will give this error every time... You cannot use a parallels desktop VM durring any more than one single login session, otherwise you will need to reboot, regardless of the state you leave paralells in...

:(
 
Great, I rebooted since last time and now it STILL gives the error...

I don't know what else to try at this point, as now it seems to permanently think the VM is open when in fact it cannot possibly be (how can it be open after a full restart and a single login session?)...

Anybody have any ideas on how to get the VM open again??? Nothing I do at this point seems to make any difference to parallels... I appear to be fully stuck with no way of opening the VM what-so-ever...
 
I am having this issue with a very important VM. How do we remove this lock condition? Please help!
 
You need to delete the lock file stored in the same directory as the pvs file.

Use terminal instead of Finder to do it, as Finder doesn't see the lock file.
 
I managed to open a VM by renaming the directory where the VM is stored, then creating a new VM in parallels with the original name. Then I deleted the new machine and restored the old directory name.

I haven't figured out how to remove VM's from the list. This is a highly annoying bug.
 
Unfotuantly I decided to create a new VM using the old HD image... It worked (at least for this attempt), however I had to reactivate windows... Which means my one free reactivation is gone... :(

Being I purchased an OEM copy, it will probably be pretty difficult to re-activate if I ever need to...
 
I ran into this issue with the latest beta build and deleting the file, .winxp.pvs.lock, appears to correct this. This file is located in the same directory as the VM's .pvs file. You need to do this via Terminal because Finder will treat this as a hidden file and won't display it.
 
virek said:
You need to delete the lock file stored in the same directory as the pvs file.

Use terminal instead of Finder to do it, as Finder doesn't see the lock file.
Click to expand...

I tried that immediately when it happened, because i assumed it was a lock issue. As soon as i removed the file, the computer REBOOTED!
 
I renamed the Parallels folder with version 1970 to Parallels1970 before I installed version 3036.
After the installation I got a lock situation with version 3036.
I was able to get the locked VM unlocked by using the unlock button in version 1970. ;)
If you don't have 1970 installed anymore, you can always install it by renaming the version 3036 folder before installing version 1970.
After that you have both versions available.

p.s.
Tip: Give the folder with version 1970 another name and the folder with version 3036 the original name.
If you install a new beta, you don't have to worry anymore about the possibility of overwriting version 1970.
 
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...how do I delete the lock file

I'm a newbie from the windows world...and not used to the Unix commands at all in Terminal. Can someone give me newbie instructions for the delete command to kill the winxp.pvs.lock file? Much appreciated! :)
 
...the easy way.

Go to the Parallels library directory under the user libraries and locate the Parallels directory. Rename it to Parallels.OLD. Create a new Parallels directory and copy ONLY the PVS file into it that you want to use. The .lock file is still in the .OLD directory and won't be referenced upon application restart. Be aware though, if the system is in a sleep mode, you will lose any unsaved data just like you would if you power-cycled your workstation in the middle of the day.

I personally have not had 'good' luck puting a Parallels session to Sleep and might recommend shutting the session down after each use; i do.

I hope this helps!

Bill

;)
 
wthudson said:
I personally have not had 'good' luck puting a Parallels session to Sleep and might recommend shutting the session down after each use; i do.
Click to expand...

What problems have you been having? I've been seeing some mysterious system restarts that seem to be correlated with sleep, and I have been putting the machine to sleep with Parallels running.

[Oops, I now see that you're talking about putting the VM to sleep, not the mac... never mind]
 
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I'm having the same error. How do you use terminal to delete this file: .winxp.pvs.lock

I'm don't use terminal and don't know how to navigate around to delete this.

Can someone give me the commands.
 
I used terminal to navigate to the directory but I only see the following files:

- unattended.fdd
- winxp.hdd
- winxp.pvs

I don't see .win.pvs.lock.

I also tried kill .win.pvs.lock

That's about as much unix as I know. If anyone can help that would be great.
 
As stated before, to fix this error you need to delete the lock file. Here is how to do it.

Open up terminal (should be under applications>utilities)

change directory to where you keep the virtual images (default is library/parallels/[VM name])

[VM name]= name of virtual machine, make sure to get rid of the brackets, in my case I called it winxp and the command below assume this

type the following to change to the directory you want

cd Library/Parallels/winxp/

type the following to see all the files in the directory, the file you want starts with a period so you need to add the little "-a" in order to see those files

ls -a

at this point you should see the .winxp.pvs.lock file , so delete it

rm .winxp.pvs.lock

Try it now ..... this worked for me

Unix commands are your friend, be sure to take some time to learn a few basics. Take care.
 
Thanks!

I appreciate you taking the time to help other users like me with this annoying little issue -- thanks for sharing this solution with us, it sure helped me!

nick

QUOTE=jiron2000]As stated before, to fix this error you need to delete the lock file. Here is how to do it.

Open up terminal (should be under applications>utilities)

change directory to where you keep the virtual images (default is library/parallels/[VM name])

[VM name]= name of virtual machine, make sure to get rid of the brackets, in my case I called it winxp and the command below assume this

type the following to change to the directory you want

cd Library/Parallels/winxp/

type the following to see all the files in the directory, the file you want starts with a period so you need to add the little "-a" in order to see those files

ls -a

at this point you should see the .winxp.pvs.lock file , so delete it

rm .winxp.pvs.lock

Try it now ..... this worked for me

Unix commands are your friend, be sure to take some time to learn a few basics. Take care.[/QUOTE]
 
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