Non-bootable windows disk

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doubledave22

Member
Hi, new to the forums and new to Parallels... i really like the concept except im having troubles i think with my windows disk. When i start up parallels and hit the play button, i get an error that says "no boot device available, press enter to continue". I am guessing i am getting this because i cannot boot from my present xp disk. Is that the problem or is it something else?

Also is there any other way i can get it to boot (i am on a macbook pro) and i have no access to floppy disks.

thanks,
dave
 
Booting from CD

doubledave22 wrote: "When i start up parallels and hit the play button, i get an error that says "no boot device available, press enter to continue"."
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Before you start your VM, selet the Edit menu in Parallels, click Virtual Machine, and select the "Booting" button at the top. Next, select the item line that looks for the CD drive first.

If your CD is not a bootable CD, then it won't work anyway. You'll need to make yourself a bootable CD. I made one from following the instructions at: http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/
 
hi, thanks for the response, i already did what you said about choosing it to read the disk first and that didnt work.

I tried your link but when i download step 2:
Download the latest PE Builder version (self-installing package) and install it.

I am on a mac and this file isnt compatable with macs which pretty much is the whole reason for me wanting to get this file to work ironically. In other words what other ways can i make my windows disk bootable?

edit: i just downloaded the zip form and it worked... now i gotta figure out how to do this.

Now i cant seem to find: Start PE Builder (pebuilder.exe). When you start PE Builder for the first time it will ask if you agree with the license agreement.

It comes in a file suitable for what seems to be terminal for my mac and doesnt want to open. Im lost...
 
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i dont have a floppy drive... are u saying get the files and then route parallels to a folder with the files in them to boot? Regardless, i think i tried this and i couldnt get the files to download so that they were mac compatable.
 
But you can add virtual floppy drive to your vm configuration....
What windows are you unstalling?
On the windows CD floppy images is in the directiory Boot or bootimages (something like this, i forgot :) )
Copy *.img files from there to somewhere on your Mac hard drive. Say to virtual floppy into VM to use first image.
Set boot sequence with Floppy first.
Try to boot. When installer will ask you to insert a second floppy, disconnect first and connect second floppy image to VM. And so on.
 
i know i can add a virtual floppy drive, i am installing xp professional SP2 or w/e it is. I am trying to find the boot images like u said and i cannot find them. this is getting kind of frustrating, but thanks for the help. I gotta get creative maybe... any other ideas anyone?
 
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Bart PE Builder

doubledave22 wrote: "Now i cant seem to find: Start PE Builder (pebuilder.exe). When you start PE Builder for the first time it will ask if you agree with the license agreement."
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Sorry, you need to use the PE Builder within Windows XP, and burn a bootable disc using Nero or something that does bootable discs.
 
"Sorry, you need to use the PE Builder within Windows XP, and burn a bootable disc using Nero or something that does bootable discs."

Yeah i just did this on my g/f's computer and at the very end i got an error that said something about the burning process and i tried it and it didnt work. I even saved an iso of the image that PE created and i am currently trying to get parallels to read the folder it is in but i cant seem to do that either. Im stuck... i dont get why it didnt burn fully... does it have to be a cdrw?
 
okay now im making progress. I got past the no boot device available, but this was only because i used the ISO i created from the PE Builder that i burnt to a disk to load. The problem is when it finally loads it leads me to "Bart PC" which has me dumbfounded. What am i supposed to do from barts pc? Or what can i do? I dont think the ISO has the windows xp from the orig cd, or maybe it does i dont know, can anyone with experience with Barts PC help me?
 
My mistake. My recommendations were actually for something else entirely. Apparently my brain for a moment decided to think you were trying to do something you really aren't. Please forgive me for wasting so much of your time with BartPE.
 
If your Windows install CD is bootable, you can get it to boot in Parallels by setting the boot configuration to look for the CD first, and setting the CD to be on controller 0:0 with the first hard disk on 0:1 or 1:1. During the install, Windows will eventually want to boot from the newly installed configuration. At that point, stop your MV and switch the hard disk back to 0:0, the CD to 1:0, and the boot order to hard disk first.

PS this has been posted many times on this forum. Search is your friend.
 
i know about the search function and i did search before i made the thread. I didnt know what my problem was so when i searched for bootable windows i couldnt find anythin relating. When i realized it was the boot device problem then i found a billion.

i guess i just need to get a new windows disk because mine doesnt boot and when i turn it into a bootable disk using barts thing, it loads to Barts PC and i have no clue what to do from there.
 
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