Help! Windows XP Pro & OS Vanished

S

Steve Childers

Bit poster
I recently purchased a MacBook Pro and I've been running Parallels 3.0 comfortably for several weeks.

Suddenly today I booted up the computer, clicked on th Windows HD.app icon on my desktop to switch to the Windows OS side (which runs all my email, address book, projects, tasks, etc. via Franklin Covey Plan Plus for Outlook), and all I got was a dialog box prompting me to install the Windows OS by entering the registration info.

I called Apple Support. They told me to restart the computer and hold down the option
key. I did and found that ONLY the Mac hard drive showed up on the screen. They
said because the Windows hard drive did not also show up that the Mac was, for some
reason, not recognizing the Windows system.

They said this was a problem that only Parallels support could help me with and
they gave me Parallel's tech support number. Since I have a huge project due tomorrow, Monday, and I'm on Eastern time, this means I cannot talk to Parallels support until Noon on Monday (9am Pacific is when the phone message said tech support begins).

So I'm writing this new thread hoping that someone out there might be able to help me before Monday noon my time. Thanks so much for any help or advice.
 
Are you using Boot Camp or did you install Windows through Parallels?

If you installed Windows through Parallels, go to your Documents folder. In the Documents folder you should see a Parallels folder. Open it. You should then see a Microsoft Windows XP folder. Open that folder and look for a file that has the extension pvs. Open that file and see if Windows boots. If the file or any of the folders I mentioned are missing, you could try a Spotlight search for files that have names that end with pvs.

Otherwise if you did not install through Parallels but instead used Boot Camp, then you definitely have something more serious wrong with your Windows partition. You could open Disk Utility (located in Applications > Utilities) to see if the partition even shows up because if it doesn't you there is likely no way to recover it. If it does show up you (and is formatted in FAT32) you can attempt to repair it.
 
Brkirch...You saved the day my friend! I did exactly what you said and Windows launched...and now I'm back to work. This is the first time I've ever used a forum and did so out of sheer desperation. I am very, very grateful for your willingness to take the time to help out a neophyte like me. And on behalf of all those waiting for me to complete this project I thank you as well. Sincerely, Steve
 
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