Help! Black Screen even in safe mode

H

howardtnyc

Bit poster
I am running parallels build 3188 on a macbook pro.

I have a windows xp VM. Worked fine for a few months. All of the sudden the other day, when I try to bring it up, it shows the windows animated logo for a minute and then goes to a totally black screen.

Now, I understand there is an issue with video drivers and the parallel tools but this seems to be a different problem. A few things:

1) I get the same problem whether I boot to regular, safe or command prompt mode (I am able to see the boot menu no prob, but as soon as I select a mode, the window resizes (as usual) and then it goes black.

2) in safe mode, the text that says "safe mode" in the 4 corners as well as the windows build number is visible (in white) but everything behind it is black so of course I cant do anything (like reinstall video drivers or parallels tools etc)

So right now I appear to be totally locked out of this vm. 2 things would be helpful. I also tried the trick of creating a new vm based on this vm, but it has the same problem.

I *am* able to open other VMs with no problem so it suggests the issue is probably not with my parallels install but with this particular VM.

If anyoen has a way I can fix this VM that would be ideal... if not, is tehre any way to mount a VM as if its an external drive so that I can at least get files off? Or in any other way "recover" stuff from a corrupt VM?
thx!!!
-H
 
...also

i should add that I havent upgraded my parallels recently and also have not done anything by way of installing or changing parallels tools or video drivers recently
 
Any suggestions out there on how to fix this? I'm having the exact same problem ... MB Pro, 3188 was working fine but several weeks ago it just started giving me the black screen on startup. Booting into Safe Mode still gives the black screen, all I can see is the mouse cursor and the "Safe Mode" text in the corners.
 
Yeah, I know how frustrating that is.

I wasnt able to "fix" the VM but I was able to get the data off.

What I did was probably more convaluted than necessary, so try this--load the vm that is corrupted, but put a windows boot CD in your DVD drive before you "start" it (I assume you have or can make one of the). Prob would also work with a floppy. When it starts up, go to the boot manager (hold down the F-key) and just tell it to boot to the cd or floppy or whatever rather than the virtual hard drive. It shoudl boot fine since you are not using the VM's corrupted version of windows. Once you do that, you will be in another version of windows that was on the DVD (generic desktop, etc) HOWEVER you should also have your old drive (your old C drive) available as well. So then just open that in My computer, copy the files you need over to the mac side and then once you ahve everything you can nuke the vm and start again. Pain in the butt to have to reinstall all your sw but at least you have your data. You might want to hang on to that old corrupt VM for a few weeks in case you realize you forgot something.

Now if that doesnt work, here is what I actually did (and that worked, but took longer) which was to re-install windows. So in that case, in short, I put a windows install cd in tghe drive, opened the corrupted VM but when I started the VM I booted to the windows install CD, not the hard drive. So that puts you into the generic windows installer and I installed windows on corrupted VM's "drive" (the virutal drive of the VM), howevr when I did it I told it not to remove the old version but to install *another* version of windows on the same drive (it warns you that this can cause problems but it will do it). Once you do that you basically have 2 versions of windows on that same virtual drive. (what you will have to do, as i recall, is install the new windows in a different directory than the old one. So Maybe its called WIndowsNT2 or something like that (you can name it). Then when you re-boot the vm, you will be given a menu choice as to which copy of windows you want to load. Obviously load the new one. So then if you just go into the Documents and setting folder you will see that you have duplicate of everything- beacuase you have 2 versions of windows (like 2 admin users, etc). So just find the old versions of your my documents folder, desktop folder, etc and you can, again, copy your files out (burn them to DVD or copy to the mac side or whatever). Of course,dont keep using this screwed up double version of windows, just get your data and get rid of the thing. Again, this worked for me, but takes a while b/c you have to do a whole windows intall.. I think the other approach is quicker, but I didnt actually try it.

Best of luck with it! Obviously what would be a better long term solution is if Parallels would:

1) fix the bug that causes the black screen problem
2) enable you to just "mount" any parallels virtual machine as a drive so you can just go into it evern if it wont boot and recover files, etc.

But, hey, Parallels is a miracle as it is, so I'm not complaining.

best of luck!
-H
 
Howard, thanks for the tips, up and running again! I was hoping to avoid a reinstall but after your reply I decided to just bite the bullet and proceed. It actually went better than I thought though ...

I launched the broken VM and booted using my XP disk to begin a reinstall of Windows. During the beginning of that process, it detected my previous XP installation and gave me the option to repair it, so I went ahead and tried that. It pretty much functioned like a normal XP install at that point, (lasted 45 mins or so, had to enter my win key, etc) but the end result was that it booted back into my previous installation so I didn't have to reinstall any of my Windows apps and all my data was where it belonged.

At that point, I uninstalled/reinstalled the Parallels tools just to be safe. All is back to normal. Thanks again!
 
cool!

Wow, thats great to know. I considered trying that myself, but I was afraid of the "repair" tools (like maybe it would make it worse kind of thing), but its great that that worked. I'd be curious to hear whether that fixes the problem long term.
best,
H
 
What is the F-key?

I'm having the exact same problem but can't figure how to boot the CD. I select that as my boot option and it doesn't do anything different but I'm not sure what the F-key is.
 
boot order not done with f key

To change the device boot order stop the virtual machine, go to Edit>virtual machine, click the booting "tab" (buttons on upper right of screen), and pick the boot sequence you want.
 
I'm doing that but still doesn't work

I have the correct boot sequence. The problem is I still get the black screen of death.

Parallels says "booting from CD" but then nothing else happens. The screen just goes all black and stays that way. I don't see any option to do a recovery, etc. How do I get this?
 
cant boot from cd

hmmm...
are you sure you have a working bootable cd in the drive?
Are you using a windows install CD or just a regular bootable cd? If its just a regular bootable, try using a windows install cd and using the repair function.
If you are trying to boot to a windows repair cd (or dvd) and parallels is corectly set to boot from the DVD, and even when you boot from the DVD you get teh black screen, then I dont know how to help, it sounds like a different problem than the one I have solved in the past.
best of luck, and...
if you want to see really funny web animations including a new series called Paris Hilton:Prison Diaries, go to http://snide.tv

-H
 
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