Stumped

P

paul koltnow

Bit poster
I've spent about three hours searching this forum and I can't find anything about what seems to me a very basic question so I'm going to lean on you guys.

I purchased Parallels Desktop for Mac 4.0.(upgraded to latest version) I am running this on a Mac Pro with 8gb ram and Intel quad core processor. I'm using leopard 10.5.6.

I am wanting to add my XP computer (desktop) to my Mac Pro, seems simple enough right? I ran transporter on my windows machine. I followed the migration wizard and used express migration. After about 2 hours I was left with these files; .csv, two .hdd files, a system file and something else I don't remember.

Everything seems to be going as expected right? I believe I have followed the manual exactly to this point.

I moved these files to an external HD and connected to my Mac Pro. Now here is where my confusion begins.

I tried to run Transporter on the Mac but this was no good. It could not find the files. I read the parallels manual and left very confused. At this point I had not installed a Virtual Machine on my Mac. I figured this was the problem, and created a new Virtual Machine using Parallels Desktop. I had to find my XP disc and go through the full XP installation. Which seems wrong to me. If I am going to be using an XP system that is fully functioning why do I have to install a new XP OS?

I installed the new XP system and it was running great. Ok so back to Transporter. It is my thought that I have to use Transporter again on the Mac. When I do this I still can't find the files. I then guessed that maybe I had to copy the files off the external HD so I copied 112gb onto my Mac HD. After 87 minutes of this fun. Still no luck. transporter can not find these files.

If I click on the files directly Parallels tells that they are read only. I then got some success by going through the Parallels > file > open. Which produced an error message that told me that I had to contact Parallels support to be able to open the files.

At this point I've just about given up. I thought I knew something about computers but I am really frustrated so far.

My last attempt was to copy all of my files on my XP machine that I wanted on my Mac to a Ex HD and then just bring these files over to my Mac and call it a work-around. But when I did this two very interesting things occurred. My XP virtual machine said it couldn't open any of the files, and I had copies of everything I added to the Virtual XP on my Mac desktop.

I know this is a long post and I apologize but I wanted to explain what I did and why. I also want you to know that I read these forums and googled as well as read the manual. I feel beat up.

Thanks,
Peej
 
You have mentioned that two .hdd files was created which actually seems a bit odd since .hdd is supposed to be a hard disk image for the virtual machine and there should be only one.

In any case, all you should actually need is a valid .hdd file. Whatever the version of Parallels that you have you should be able to do the following:
1. Install Parallels Desktop
2. Start creating a new virtual machine using Custom installation mode (this is important).
3. when prompted, choose "Use existing hard disk image" and point to the .hdd file that you have created using Parallels Transporter.

One more way (more of a workaround in your case, but this is still a valid option):

You can go to Configuration (or Configuration Editor in Parallels 3.0) and add a second hard disk image pointing again to the .hdd file that you have. After that, you would have (for example) two local drives in Windows, C: and D: where D: would be a hard disk you have attached with all the data inside.

And finally you have mentioned that "My XP virtual machine said it couldn't open any of the files, and I had copies of everything I added to the Virtual XP on my Mac desktop."
As I understood, you have manually copied files from your Windows laptop to the Mac and tried opening it. I did not get a clear picture of what have happened but you can actually pass these files to your Windows virtual machine in many ways, i.e.
1. Drag and Drop them to the Windows side.
2. In Parallels configuration make a shared folder and place all the files to that shared folder.
3. If it is Paralles 4.0 then files on a USB storage device would be accessible on a Windows side as a network drive.

All of the above require that Parallels Tools would be installed in the virtual machine.

Also, and that actually might be what happened with files in your case, please note that if Shared Profile feature is enabled in Parallels then Windows and Mac would have the same content on their Desktops. So, if you try to copy something by dragging (copy-paste or whatever) from Mac desktop to Windows desktop or vice versa there should be a message that files are already there.
In Windows, as far as I know, a copy of all these files indeed might be created instead.

Hope this helps.
 
Desgael,

Thanks for the reply. I appreciate the feedback.

I definitely have two .hdd files. One is labelled hardisk 1.hdd and the other is harddisk.hdd.

1) Do I need to transfer the .hdd files from my external disk to my mac? If so should I just drag and place or use Parallel Transporter?

2) Do I need to run Transporter on my Mac on the .hdd files before I can use them?


Again,

Thanks for the help.
 
It could be that you had more than one drive on a real PC. In any case, you can just drag these hard disks to the Mac. Or even leave them on external disk.
Then, you need to do the following:
1. Install Parallels Desktop
2. Start creating a new virtual machine using Custom installation mode (this is important).
3. when prompted, choose "Use existing hard disk image" and point to the .hdd file. We actually need a hard disk with a Windows inside, it seems you need harddisk.hdd.
4. When the virtual machine would lauch, you would need to attach the second hard disk, to do that, go to Configuration (or Configuration Editor in Parallels 3.0) and add harddisk1.hdd.
 
Ok! Did as you advised.

And it works! Thanks so much for helping me wade through this.

Your advice is very much appreciated.

All the best,
Paul
 
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