Major catostrophe - need help!

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davidmac27

Junior Member
Major catastrophe - need help!

I have OSX 10.4.9 and loaded build 3188. I then loaded up Vista Home Premium and a ton of Windows programs. This evening when I tried to start Vista, it complains that Windows failed to start due to:

File: \Windows\system32\config\system

Status: 0xc0000225

Info: Windows failed to load because the system registry file is missing, or corrupt.

Great! So I reboot with the Vista CD in the drive and Windows doesn't seem to see it. It tells me I need to insert the Vista DVD and reboot and then click "Repair your computer"

The problem is that I am stuck in an endless loop and never get to this point.

Can anyone offer any suggestions? I click on the CDROM icon at the bottom left of the Parallels window and it reports that I am connected to the default CD/DVD ROM. It seems that when I restart the VM, it tries to boot from the hard drive. It would seem I need to boot from the CDROM/DVD in order to get to the "Repair your computer" option.
 
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I can't offer advice on fixing the problem with Windows, but if you edit your virtual machine, click on booting (from the top options tab) choose to boot from CD-ROM first.
 
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Quick update - I edited my VM and chose to swap the HD and CDROM so that it would boot from the CDROM. When it boots, I was able to run the repair procedure. It did this and then I swapped back and booted from the HD with no change - still getting the registry corruption message. I then tried to install a fresh copy of Vista over the existing damaged one and it wouldn't let me run an Upgrade - only a clean install (thanks MSFT).

I have pretty much run out of ideas.

Parallel's support or anyone else - help!!
 
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I don't see how this is a major catastrophe. Just create a new VM, install Windows Vista (preferably Ultimate), connect the old disk image as a second hard disk and install your applications again.
 
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No, I didn't. Heck, I'm happy to pay an extra $100 to upgrade to Business, Ultimate, whatever. What I don't want to do is spend another week installing and configuring all of my applications. For all I know, this is some bug in Parallels that will happen again. All I know is that I have tried nearly everything and can't get Vista to boot. Any suggestions on how to fix this would be extremely appreciated.
 
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