The configuration file you specified is invalid.

I tried to delete Snapshot 1 via the snapshot menu and got a window saying:

The configuration file you specified is invalid.

Make sure that the specified file is a valid Parallels virtual machine
configuration file and it is not corrupt, or select another file.


This is my wife's Parallels 4. It's up to date, but maybe the snapshot isn't.

What is my next step?

 

Please answer this question.

When I upgraded to 4, I had a snapshot which I couldn't delete. I spent a month on the phone with you guys including a couple of all-nighters before giving up, having lost one of my virtual machines. My wife was very disgusted and is surprised I'm not switching our VM software.

I'm afraid to upgrade her Parallels until that is resolved.

 

Snapshots corrupt

I am having the same problem and I am surprised that there has not been any answer to this question from Howard.

When I tried to delete a Snapshot I got the message "there isn't enough space to delete snapshots"
- and thereafter this Snapshot and the latest one next to it became grey in color
and corrupt and can not be deleted even after freeing up space on the drive.

Any new snapshot becomes grey and corrupt as well.

This is the message I am getting now:

"The configuration file you specified is invalid.
Make sure that the specified file is a valid Parallels virtual machine configuration file
and it is not corrupt, or select another file."

What next ? Any suggestions ?

 

How amazing that I a having the same problem, with automatic snapshots failing with:

Make sure that the specified file is a valid Parallels virtual machine configuration file and it is not corrupt, or select another file.

And it is now 2016... and this thread started in 2009. At least their bugs are consistent AND persistent.

 

Hi All, lease take a complete back up of your virtual machine before you are following the below steps:
1, Shutdown Windows virtual machine,
2. In Mac OS X, go to Applications -> Utilities and launch Terminal. Paste the command below into Terminal as is (do not hit Enter yet):
prl_disk_tool merge --hdd

3, Find your virtual machine in Finder. Right click on the .pvm file of your virtual machine and choose Show Package Contents. Drag your WindowsXXX.hdd file into Terminal and drop it. In Terminal you will see something like this:

prl_disk_tool merge --hdd /Users/Username/Documents/Parallels/Windows\ 7.pvm/Windows\ 7-0.hdd
Note: Please note there should be a space between --hdd and /Users/Username...

Press Enter key to start merging Snapshots, once it is done all the snapshots will be merged.

 

I'm running Parallels Desktop 11 for Mac (Version 11.2.1) on an iMac running El Capitan (Version 10.11.6). I have a need to increase the size of my disk assigned to my Windows 10 VM, but am running into the issue described here. I have tried the procedure described above but am still experiencing the problem after that appeared to run to completion. The particular VM I am running started out as a Windows 7 VM and was upgraded to Windows 10. When I go to "Manage Snapshots" for this VM, it shows 5 "greyed out" snapshots, none of which can be deleted.

 

Further to my previous post, I was able to get by the issue by deleting the Snapshots.xml file from within the list shown when right clicking on the PVM file and selecting "Show Package Contents". With the snapshots deleted, I was able to expand the size of the hard drive for my Windows 10 VM. FWIW, after doing that and then restarting the VM, the drive was still showing as the original size. The additional space had been assigned as as "Healthy (Recovery Partition)", but I was able to fix that by following along the instructions in kb.parallels.com/en/123372, and now have a properly expanded drive available.

 

8 Years later and this is still a problem, Can't delete snapshots to free up space and it's making my VM OS run like faeces.