Hard drive got wiped

I tried installing Parallels Desktop 10 for Mac. I have three partitions on my main hard drive. This didn't present a problem in the past, but this time, I got an error message saying that there was no operating system installed on the drive. After installing Parallels Desktop 10 for Mac, under Mavericks, my Bootcamp partition's Master Boot Record was ruined. So I tried reinstalling Windows 7 from the DVD. That ended up deleting all the data from the partition.

- I installed Parallels Desktop 10 for Mac. Running the application one time ruined the Master Boot Record for my Windows 7 drive.
- I had to reinstall Windows 7, which basically ended up formatting the partition instead of placing the existing data in a folder called Windows.old, which it usually does.

I lost over 600 GB of data simply from installing Parallels Desktop for Mac.

Moral of the story is:
- Don't use Parallels or VMWare with anything newer than Snow Leopard. I should have never assumed that installing Parallels Desktop would work, or that it would NOT wipe my hard drive.

I would say that I should have backed up my files, but let's be honest: I shouldn't need to backup an entire hard drive of data every time I install a new application. I guess Parallels Desktop was maybe all right in the past, but I just lost all this data, and in my humble opinion, that is not all right.

By definition, this solidly places Parallels Desktop 10 for Mac under the category of Malware.

 

It does not corrupt the Master Boot Record anymore, but it only recognizes the operating system when I switch the Hard Drive from SATA 0:4 to SATA 0:1. It works now, thanks a bunch.

 

It is doing this again. It was working just fine yesterday, and I recorded a video with Parallels in action, but today it decided to misbehave and Parallels simply refuses to recognize that there is in fact an operating system on my Bootcamp drive.

 

I tried it again today, same result. Looks like I'll have to retire Parallels and go back to VMWare or boot into Windows. Sorry, Parallels, you were nice while you lasted.

 

Hi, repair Windows by following the steps mentioned here. Additionally, generate a Problem Report ID if the issue persists.

 

Step 12 says:
"When the main Windows Vista/7 setup screen appears, click on the Repair your computer option."
That option does not exist. Where can I see that on the screen? I'm using a Windows 7 x64 SP1 installation DVD. All I see are hard drives in a list and options for "New", "Format", "Erase" and "Load Drivers", etc., but nothing related to repair. When I click "Next", it says that it will install the operating system then. See, it goes from the keyboard and language selection screen directly to the License Agreement and then the hard drive selection; nowhere is there an option for repair like Windows XP x86 SP1 had in the past, and which Windows Vista had, if I recall correctly.

 

When I boot through the DVD using Parallels, I get the repair option screen, and the diagnosis is:

Boot sector for system disk partition is corrupt.
Repair action: Boot sector repair
Result: Failed. Error code = 0x490
Time taken = 182521 ms

So Parallels is apparently still corrupting or misinterpreting the boot sector of the Bootcamp partition.

I submitted a problem report with ID 104466005.

 

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