I have installed a driver on Win XP running under Parallels that causes a fatal VM error. That is, I don't get the Windows Blue Screen of Death - instead my Windows session closes and I'm prompted to file a Parallels bug report. I'm happy to do so, but what's more urgent to me at the moment is to get my Windows installation back. It took me quite a bit of time to configure. If one can get into the Windows boot menu, there is an option to restore the last known good configuration. That should do what I want. The problem is that when I'm in the boot menu, my keyboard doesn't work. There is no response to pressing any of the keys on my keyboard. Also, I wasn't able to get into the boot menu the usual way, by pressing a function key. Windows just continues to boot until the VM aborts. But I stumbled across a way to get the boot menu, which is to press the VM's power button and power off the emulated PC. Windows will give the menu on its next boot after a power failure. I am using Parallels Desktop for Mac build 1970, with Windows XP Service Pack 2, on a Mac Pro with 2 2.66 GHz dual-core Xeons and 2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 FB-DIMM memory. The bad driver is one my company is developing. Most of us use Parallels on Macs, but I'm the first one this has happened to. I don't doubt that a bug in our driver caused this, but it shouldn't have made the VM abort. Thanks for any help you can give me.
A workaround, but not a solution to your problem, would be to back up your VM (using Finder) before installing anything you might be sorry you installed. Then getting back to where you started is a matter of copying a file. In fact, if everyone made backups on a regular basis, a substantial number of the problems posted here would not have occurred. I back up my entire system before I install ANYTHING, or change anything I might not be able to change back. I even back up before installing Apple updates in case they break some third party app and I need to revert. I've found it to be good policy over the decades I've been in this business.
It turns out that the software I was trying to install is not considered to work in Parallels, because it does a lot of low-level access to the hardware. I'll be installing Bootcamp tomorrow, and so will have to do a fresh Windows installation anyway. Most likely the problem was caused by our driver's attempt to access a USB dongle for copy protection purposes. The Parallels bug report wouldn't send because Mail isn't configured on that machine, but tomorrow I'll get it configured so the bug report can go. Even though I wouldn't expect the dongle to work, it shouldn't have crashed the VM. From now on, I'll know to do what you say - back up my image before installations!
