sp2 upgrade now windows won't start

N

Neil Houghton

Bit poster
OK, I,m really new to this... so please bear with me :)

I just installed parallels 3 (build 5582) on my 24" 2.4 GHz intel iMac running 10.4.11.

I imported a vpc virtual machine (running a fairly old version of xp pro) that I had been using on my old (G5) iMac.

This all went well and I had the machine up & running and fired up some windows software (the reason I need windows on my mac).

VPC had been such a dog on the G5 that it had been a LONG time since I had updated windows, so I thought before I put too much time/effort into inputing all my data I should bring my virtual machine up to speed.

I set the windows auto update going (but with it set to ask me before downloading and installing - in case I needed to stop for a while!) and many hours of downloading, installing, downloading, installing ensued.

It was all going fine until I got to the SP2 upgrade. I got a bit nervous when, for the first time, the installer warned me to back up all my data. So, since I already had several hours invested in the updates to then, I backed out of the installer, shut the machine and cloned it.... that's the good news!

So I restarted the machine and proceeded with the upgrading - the sp2 upgrade seemed to take a real long time but finally it said the installation was complete and prompted me to restart - which I did.

Only now I get the black screen which says "We apologize for the inconvenience, but Windows did not start successfully. ........" I have tried all the options of safe starts and the "last good configuration" option but all just come back to the black screen.

My cloned pre-upgrade SP1 machine still starts up OK.

So now I'm trying to work out my next step. I desparately need to get on and actually do some work - so do I:

1) just stick with my (working) SP1 configuration (which MS says is out-of-date & not supported)

2) clone my working machine again and try the upgrade again - my instinct say this would just be a waste of many hours and lead to another broken virtual machine

3) is there a way to actually access/troubleshoot/fix the broken machine which has the hours of SP2 intallation invested in it.

The only variable that comes to mind is that during the SP2 installation there was a message along the lines of ... some of your hardware has been changed by third party do you want to let the installer overwrite this... if you do, the third party applications may not work correctly... if you don't very bad things will happen (I don't remember exactly what but it sounded bad enough to make me say go ahead - do what you have to do!!)

Only now I'm wondering if the third party application was parallels and if this is what the problem is (on the other hand the message implied that windows might self-destruct if I DIDN'T let it have it's way)

The only other posts I've seen seem to all refer to installing via stan-alone windows licences - but the whole reason I got parallels was it said I could import my VPC virtual machine which is my only valid windows licence (and, to be fair, it did succesfully let me import and run said machine - its just updating windows thats proving to be a problem)

Since lots of people did use VPC and must prefer to now go to parallels, I'm hoping that someone has already encountered (and fixed!!) this problem.

TIA
 
Follow up

Replying to my own post...

I decided to see if the installation warning/writeover was the problem so I cloned the working sp1 machine and went through the upgrade process again - but this time said NO when it wanted to overwrite - nothing quit or died and the installation completed.

However, as before, when the machine restarted I got the same Windows did not start black screen. Again tried all safe start modes and "last good configuration option but all gave the same outcome.

So I guess I'm stuck with using my working SP1 machine until I work out what the problem is.

Any suggestions? Help please!
 
Hello,

please do the following:
1. Find your Parallels hard disk file whose name ends in .hdd. Usually
it is located in the Macintosh HD/Users/YourUserName/Library/Parallels/
or Macintosh HD/Users/YourUserName/Documents/Parallels/ folder. You can
use Finder to find the .hdd file.
2. Right-click the file (or control-click if you have a one button
mouse) and choose Open Package Contents from the pop-up menu.
3. In the window that opens, you should see the lock file - it ends in
.lck. Just drag it out of the package window to your desktop (don't
touch anything else).
4. Close the package window and you should be able to start up Parallels
with no issues. Once you've verified Parallels starts up OK, you can
trash the .lck file.

If you still have this issue or you have no .lck files, please in the
Finder, browse to the virtual machine folder; then find and delete the
.sav and .mem files in the virtual machine folder.

Best regards,
Stacey
 
Pardon me if you tried this already, but it didn't jump out at me.

Have you tried backing up your VPC, upgrading everything from there, and THEN cloning it over?
 
oops, forgive previous reply - now I see how Quick reply works!

Back to the problem:

Stacey,

In my case, in the Macintosh HD/Users/YourUserName/Documents/Parallels/ folder I now have 5 virtual machine folders. Three contain permutations of SP1 machines - all of which work, the other two contain machines on which I installed SP2 - both said the installation was complete at the time but both are now broken in that I get the black screen which says "We apologize for the inconvenience, but Windows did not start successfully. ........" with both broken machines I tried all the options of safe starts and the "last good configuration" option but all just came back to the black screen.

I looked at the package contents for all five .hdd files. In each case (ie both working and non-working machines) the package contains just two files:
DiskDescriptor.xml and
BaseDrive.hdd.0.{lots here}.hds
So there does not appear to be any .lck files in any of the .hdd packages.

With regard to your alternative - there did not seem to be any .sav or .mem files in the virtual machine folders of any of the virtual machines - they all contained one .hdd file, one .pvs file and two folders called Windows Disks and Windows Applications. In each case the Windows Disks folder just contained a folder alias called "C". The Windows Applications folders contained varying numbers of windows applications, depending on the activity each machine had experienced (in the case of the broken SP2 machines this must have been applications used prior to applying the SP2 upgrade).

Just to clarify the problem again - there is no problem starting parallels and parallels is not crashing. The problem is that when I applied the SP2 upgrade to a working SP1 machine (using the Windows Update Automatic application) Windows is refusing to start - I repeated the process on a different virtual machine - just in case it was a bad download/installation (though it said that it had successfully installed) and in both cases the sequence of events and the results were the same.

Eru - if I understand your suggestion, this is basically what I did (twice) - it is the "upgrading everything from there" step that is the problem - after the upgrade Windows wont start up.

By the way, I have since had a look through things with parallels explorer and it shows all the virtual machines and all the virtual drives and I can browse through them ( though all that Windows stuff doesn't mean much to me!!)

At this point, my only thought is that there is something about my basic virtual machine configuration that is incompatible with Windows SP2 - but since I don't really understand the whole SP1 - SP2 thing I seem to be stuck here!

In the meantime, I need to get on with some windows work - so I am persevering with my main (working) SP1 virtual machine - but this is obviously not a long-term solution.

Any more suggestions? Am I the only one to have encountered this problem? Help please!
 
I am sure i read on one of these forums that you cannot do an SP2 upgrade to an existing Winxp spi virtual HDD install. I think you find you will have to do an install of WIn XP with SP2 already included, ie last release before vista
 
Can anyone from Parallels confirm this? Stacey? - if this is the case I'll just plug along with SP1 and not waste any more time on this.

Also, if this is the case why doesn't the SP2 installer pick up the problem, instead of telling you it has installed succesfully and prompting you to restart. Or is this just what you expect from Microsoft software.

Is this likely to be different if I downloaded the update separately, rather than using the Windows Update Automatic application.
 
On another tack - having already paid for two XP Pro licences (with VPC6 & VPC7) I'm not about to throw any more money at MS for a third licence.

However, is there anything that would stop me borrowing a friends XP Pro SP2 disc (assuming I can find one) and then using one of my existing keys to activate it - or do MS somehow distinguish between the keys for the systems bundled with VPC and the retail versions.

Also would that mean that I have to start with a "clean" new virtual machine - so I'd have to re-install all my windows applications and try & transfer over data?
 
Let me run through the items:

1. Running a manual installer versus auto-update.
Worth a try. I know with Apple updates this is a much more sure way of taking updates.

2. Using a borrowed CD. Technically it would work.

3. Suggestion of mine: Slipstreaming. You can copy over your SP1 disk to your computer, download SP2, then integrate the package into it and burn yourself a SP2 install disk.
 
Hi Eru,

Thanks for the feedback. My thoughts now are:

1. This would let me keep my existing VM so it is probably worth a try when I can get time. However given the nature of the failure, my expectation of success is not high :(

2. Main problem (if my understanding is correct) is that I would have to to start with a "clean" new virtual machine - so I'd have to re-install all my windows applications and try & transfer over data. However SHOULD work.

3. Same problem as 2. but with much more work involved. I appreciate this would be a solution if I can't access an original SP2 installation disk - other than that would there be any other advantages be over approach 2.?

4. I have had no feedback from parallels whether there is some insurmountable obstacle to upgrading an SP1 VM to SP2. All their promo pushes the advantage of being able to just import a VPC VM - but no mention of "but it will be impossible to upgrade older VPC VMs" as a limitation. Given that I expected all this to "just work" I'm not real happy with parallels at present - so another option would be to download a trial version of VM Fusion - which also claims to painlessly import VMs! and see if it can do a better job than parallels! (If so, I see a 20% off switch & save offer in my latest Aust. Macworld magazine).

5) Since running into this problem I've been checking various online sites and notice that VM Fusion users seem to have much less issues/problems than parallels - I just wish I'd done more research before buying parallels and putting many hours into my VMs.

6) It would still be nice to know if, as NewMac suggests, it is actually NOT POSSIBLE to upgrade an existing SP1 VM to SP2 before I try option 1. and possibly waste several more hours!

Would any Parallels support member be able to confirm/deny this?
 
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