Imported a DMG file, Parallels says there is no operating system?

G

Gary King

Member
I use Boot Camp. Last week, I used Disk Utility to create a DMG file from Boot Camp. Now, I want to import that DMG file into Parallels. When I do that, though, Parallels says that "There is no operating system installed in this virtual machine."

How do I fix this? Because the DMG file has everything exactly as it was in Boot Camp at the time I created it, and I did already specify Windows 7 as the OS for the image, since Parallels couldn't determine this itself.

Thanks in advance!
 
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What version of Parallels are you using? Parallels Desktop 6 has the ability to import from Boot Camp directly.

How did you try importing the DMG into Parallels? Did you try using it as a CD/DVD or floppy or hard disk or something else?

How is the DMG formatted? Does it have partitions? Mount the .dmg in the Finder and use "diskutil list" command in Terminal.app to find out. Also try the "sudo fdisk /dev/disk#" and "sudo gpt -r show -l /dev/disk#" commands (replace # with the correct number for the mounted disk image.

Maybe there's a way to manually convert the .dmg to a Parallels .hdd but you'll need to know how to put together a hard disk with proper partitions.
http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?t=104103
 
I'm using Parallels 6. I imported the DMG by using "New Windows installation" then "Choose an image file" and selecting the DMG. The DMG has only one partition. I created it to be as simple as possible; I went to Disk Utility, select the Boot Camp drive in the left-hand bar, clicked "New Image", then created the image on an external hard drive. It's Compressed and not encrypted.
 
I think it will try to boot the .dmg as a read only CD/DVD like it was an installer disk. That's probably not what you want. And it won't boot anyway if it's not partitioned correctly.

Parallels should be changed so it can import Boot Camp from mounted .dmg files or even use Boot Camp from mounted read/write .dmg files.

Parallels has a utility to convert virtual hard disks of different types to .hdd but it does not work with .dmg or .img files.

You have two choices:
A) Restore the .dmg to a partition and use the Import Boot Camp option. Or if you still have the original Windows Boot Camp partition, then use that.

B) Convert the .dmg manually by following steps similar to http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?t=104103 (replace the "Attach your hard disk" step with "Mount the dmg")
Before you begin, you need to make sure the .dmg is formatted properly as a Windows disk. It must have an MBR partition table. The disk also needs boot code in the MBR. If you need to make changes then you need to convert the .dmg into a writable disk image. iPartition can convert the disk to MBR and add boot code for you. Or you can do the changes manually using fdisk or gdisk to fix or convert the partition table, and dd to copy MBR boot code.
 
Hello, I was trying to install Mac OS X El Capitan. When I drag the file into the window, it said "Unable to detect operating system".
 
JuanG11 said:
Hello, I was trying to install Mac OS X El Capitan. When I drag the file into the window, it said "Unable to detect operating system".
Click to expand...
Exactly which file are you selecting?

You can download El Capitan installer from here:
https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT211683

The installer is downloaded as a pkg inside a dmg. You install the pkg which creates a "Install OS X El Capitan.app" application in your Applications folder. Then when you create a new virtual machine in Parallels, you select that app as the installer image:

File -> New... -> Install Window, Linux, or macOS from an image file -> Continue -> Choose Manually -> select a file... -> "Install OS X El Capitan.app" -> Continue -> Continue (to create 5.9 GB Installer image file) -> etc.
 
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