Parallels Desktop 7 Turn On Encryption - Unable to connect Hard Disk 1

This is a tip if you encrypt a VM then get error "Unable to connect Hard Disk 1":

My scenario: I fresh-installed Windows 8 as an unencrypted VM, it ran fine. Then I encrypted it, but it would no longer start, Parallels gave the above error.

The problem: turns out in my case, the encryption task left the owner of one of the files in the hdd package as root, so I (normal user) couldn't access it read-write when I tried to start the VM.

My fix: I just quit Parallels, ran "sudo chown <myusername>:staff <Virtual Machines Folder>/<Virtual Machine.pvm>/<Virtual HDD.hdd>/<Virtual HDD.hdd.0.{...}.hds" from Terminal (gave password for sudo), restarted Parallels, started the VM, gave the VM password, and the guest OS booted up fine.

I've never had to chmod a virtual HDD file before, I've encrypted at least one older Windows (XP) VM with an older Parallels (older 7 build, or 6) with no problems. However this is the first time I've tried to encrypt this guest OS on this version of Parallels.

Current Host OS is Mac OS X 10.8.2, running Parallels Desktop 7.0.15107. Guest OS is Windows 8.

Hope this helps!

 

Thank you, KSwiss! We'll get it covered in our Knowledge Base.