the specified file cannot be used as a virtual hard disk

I've written an article for Medium on how to fix the Parallels .PVM configuration file when you get this message.

If anything's unclear, let me know and I'll edit the article.

MPI

 

Note, this posting was in error, without a link. The second posting contains the link. It doesn't yet appear to be visible to the entire forum.

 

Article is at: https://medium.com/@prenezisbell_13570/parallels-and-the-virtual-hdd-swap-disk-9e9a40e13a4a

 

Hi, Prenez. I found the article on Medium before I found this thread. I found your article very informative but it does not seem to solve my issue. I am storing and running my VMs from an external hard drive, as you suggested. However, when I open config.pvs and check those fields, the paths look fine.
id="0", which corresponds with Hard Disk 1 in the Hardware section of the Configuration window, is "macOS_2020-0.hdd" and that file is present within the .PVM package.
id="1"/Hard Disk 2 is outside the .PVM package, and the complete and correct file path is present in config.pvs.

So I don't think there is anything for me to change in config.pvs. Also, this VM was created by cloning another VM. So is it possible that is part of the problem? (All of the PVM packages sit in the same directory of the same external drive.)

Thanks in advance. I learned a lot from your article, even if I could not find the solution!