Parallels 4.0 won't start WindowsXP

It Works! (surprise, relief, and angst)

It works! I'm not really sure why, and I don't really know how, but ... it works.

After days of long hours, nailbiting, and countless color wheel spins, I tried what John from Parallels suggested below and it works. It did not entirely do the things he listed during this process and I had to bump off a couple of walls. A few times it was dark in the room and some things went bump in the night. Nonetheless, after 4 days of installing, it works. I feel so relieved.

Note that I followed the steps mentioned below. Step 1 was easy. Step 2 means (I think) to go to the top menu and tell it to "Devices - CD Rom - Connect Image" - at least that is what I did. From there, I put steps 3, 4 and 5 in place as noted. Step 6 went off and then Step 7 (MS KB arcticle) did not happen and it went completely into windows. This was scary because I had a new desktop, wrong background, and no shortcuts but when it finally came up I had my programs. Later I learned that what really happened was that it created a "Parallels Helper" user and booted into a fresh desktop. SCARY when I didn't know what it was doing. I kept checking my VM file to see if it was shrinking in size and it was not. From there I switched users to my user and everything was wonderful, except that it would not install the Parallel Tools. So, (1 hour later in the boot sequence) I returned to the instructions and did step 8.

Rebooting the VM took about 2 hours to get it through all of the prompts and it was fussy about drivers and things. Some of which it never found. Once it made it to the desktop complete, I told it from the menu to install Parallels Tools, which it did (wow, it worked). It was still fussy about something and it was running very slow. I decided to shut the VM down, shut down my mac and reboot, which took another hour because it was running really slow looking for things or something. On reboot of the whole thing and into the VM I received the "Validate Windows" and "Register MS OFfice". Once that was complete everything is here, my data and programs are all where I left them and everything appears to be working.

All total I think I spent 30-35 hours installing the update. But hey, I needed a couple of days off of work, especially really stressful ones where you think you lost a lot of things, might have to reinstall everything, and are constantly thinking about all the things you could be doing better with you computer other than just trying to get it to run.

Nonetheless, the things I see now are cool and it seems to be much faster, especially when switching from Parallels to Mac applications which was often slow in 3. I run Parallels in a single window as I learned in earlier versions that Coherence made it drrrrraaaaaggg and when putting the VM into Pause and then the Mac to sleep, it occasionally had recovery issues on resume. So, I haven't tried the new Coherence, but everything else seems to be MUCH faster and it looks like there are some cool features.

One last thing. TIME CAPSULE is now my daily friend. Get one, it saves a lot of nail biting when things like this happen.

Here's the instructions from John at Parallels about the steps I mentioned above.

Blessings to you.

 

Can any of the Parallels team tell me if the hotfix released in the last few days will solve my BSoD issues mentioned earlier in this thread??

T.

 

It didn't work completely for me!

I was having the same issues that others were having.

1) Upgraded to Parallels 4.0 (not sure I'd do this again, 3.0 was working fine, did it cause it was suppose to be faster)
-Windows XP Pro Installation on Parallels 3, gracefully shut down. Used backup and convert (took 36 hours).

2) Started Conversion, Step 1 of 4, Did manual upgrades in Windows Guest Os as prompted, Step 1 completed.

3) Step 2, got a black screen from Windows say that windows did not start properly. This window disappeared in less than a second.

4) Used the directions below got into the system thought I was good.

5) Got lots of new hardware install requests which I ignored as instructed here:http://kb.parallels.com/en/5718

6) Parallels automatically started the virtual machine upgrade process again at Step 3 (hadn't gotten there yet).

7) Received a message that parallel tools couldn't be upgraded and dumped me to a worthless webpage.

8) Closed Parallels stupid page and looked and the VM which was still running. Noticed that parallels was trying to register the tools. Allowed it through the firewall.

9) Parallel tools began finishing install. Got a bunch more install requests which I ignored.

10) Windows automatically restarted and loaded fine.

11) Shut down windows gracefully.

12) Removed the CPU flag, started the VM again. It tries to convert the VM again and doesn't work. Same screen. Now if I try to start in safe mode I get an error when it tries to load mup.sys

COME ON Parallels! I'm ready to ask for a refund on this POS!

 

Please download build 3540 from the main page http://www.parallels.com
Details how to fix you can find in http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?t=31764

 

What a nightmare.

I don't even get to the windows log in screen or anywhere near. Instead, after Parallels tells me to proceed with manual install, Windows reports "Inserting an index entry into index $0 of file 25" in an endless scrolling line. I gave up after about an hour of this. Trying the Transporter thing now, though I probably won't have the disk space for that.

bleh

Thank goodness I have alternative products I can use, because Parallels 4 appears to be a bust.

 

Error you are receiving shows file system corruption

 

Is there any solution? It booted and worked fine in Parallels 3.

 

You didn't finish repair process,
For now
Run chkdsk in recovery console
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307654
You need to change OS type to Linux, and start from Boot CD,and go to recovery console

 

OK, thank you. This is so complicated that it is really not worth it to me, so I have decided to completely reinstall everything.

Update: It took several hours, but I have completely reinstalled everything. Unfortunately, I also got a Windows Fatal Error. I believe it was caused by the Mac eventually going to sleep with Parallels running. I had to reboot the Mac to regain functionality as Parallels sort sort of hung, and the Mac became very sluggish. Luckily, I took a snapshot of the Windows install both immediately after the clean install and after Windows update finished.

 

Still not seen anything about a resolution for those of us without a (useable) backup?? Can anyone in the Parallels team comment on if this has become low priority or if it's being worked on with a fix expected soon? According to everything I've read online, this STOP A5 issue is entirely a problem of the BIOS (i.e. Parallels) and nothing to do with Windows XP or the filesystem?

Thanks

T.

 

Tony,

In case you have a backup of your PD3 VM, it is better to update to latest PD4 build 3540 and re-run the upgrade procedure against the VM from backup.

In case you don't have a backup, this thread will help you.

 

That did it, the fixme utility was exactly what was needed, another case closed. Thanks!!

T

 

same problem, and 3.0 link is wrong

I'm having similar problems, trying to upgrade from 2.5; can't open/convert my old VM in 4.0, but can't even run 2.5 on Leopard--it doesn't just crash but freezes the entire machine (extremely bad form, Parallels!) So I can't run the new version and I can't run the old version. Again, terrible job Parallels.

I tried downloading 3.0 from the link above (by John@parallels) to see if it would work, but the link is dead. Nothing there. Strike three, Parallels; I want my money back.

 

http://kb.parallels.com/en/5802