Parallels crashed, destroyed BC VM; cannot create new VM

[Paul Grothaus]

I've been running Parallels Desktop 3.0 for about a year with a VM off of my Boot Camp Windows XP installation. Recently, PD notified me of an "upgrade" to build 5636 ( I had build 5626). I installed this version, everything worked normally for a few days.

Yesterday, PD locked up while I was running Windows (XP Pro, Ver 2002, SP 3). Both the Guest OS and PD were unresponsive, everything else on the Mac side was ok. Checked Force Quit and PD was not responsive. Didn't seem to have any option but to force quit PD.

Tried to restart, everything seems fine, I get the message not to do anything while PT initalizes. Then the Guest OS window goes black and nothing happens (I did wait for over an hour). Tried to restart under Boot Camp, got the screen saying that something went wrong with the choice of Safe Mode, Last Good, or normal startup. Tried the normal, it failed. Tried again with the Last Good and it started. No problems running under Boot Camp after that.

Restarted into MacOS and tried PD. Same as before. Got the same result with a previous backup of my VM. Decided to build a new VM based on my Boot Camp disk. It seems to build it but upon startup, I get the same crash.

My Ubuntu VM runs normally.

- One very frustrated and POed Parallels customer

 

[otoc]

Did you uninstall Tools when in BootCamp before going back to starting up the existing VM? I had the same thing happen with Version 4 and while I don't know enough about the differences between versions (such as what got corrupted) you might want to try this if you haven't:

In BootCamp--uninstall Tools. Restart. Run a disk check.

Restart.

In MacOS--Remove/Delete files option the VM based on BootCamp or whatever Ver 3 has for that ( I forget already, sorry).

Restart.
Make a new VM.

That worked for me.

 

[Paul Grothaus]

otoc,

Thanks. I'm trying that now. I started Windows under Boot Camp, went to uninstall programs, selected Parallels Tools and clicked remove. I got a message "Parallels Tools require that your Windows is running under Virtual Machine. The install will be stopped."

Is there another way to remove Parallels Tools?

I'm running ChkDsk now to see if there is anything else wrong with the Boot Camp installation. It's still running but so far, no problems.

 

[Paul Grothaus]

otoc,

All is working again. I used the configuration editor to remove Parallels from the Boot Camp. Then I booted Windows from Boot Camp and tried to remove Parallels Tools. Got a message that said I had to be running the virtual machine to install Tools (I was trying to uninstall ???).

Then I ran ChkDsk. The first 4 parts finished with no error messages. Windows restarted before I could see if there were errors in the last part. Windows ran with no problems under Boot Camp but it appeared that Tools was still installed. Another attempt to remove Tools gave the same error as before.

I rebooted in Mac OS, started Parallels and tried again to create a new VM. SUCCESS!

I'm not sure which of these steps solved the problem but I am happy again. Thanks for your input.

 

[otoc]

Glad it's up and running. Sorry to send you on a wild goose chase with tools in BootCamp. V3 ran rock steady for me and I never tried doing it the same way I now do it with v4. Funny how fast I got used to the new version and forget the fine points about the old. That 'can't install' while trying to uninstall comment made me remember. Apparently there's been a change made with the tools in V4. One for the better in that respect. There is a back door way to do it but it's an manual file removal and registry edit. Lucky the simple route worked.

Bet it was more about removing that BC VM in V3 and starting over, since Remove Programs in Windows prevented that from happening to Tools. It seems that was a non-event if ChkDsk didn't correct anything.