Too many virtual machines and all are broken

Greetings,

I have a client's MacBook in front of me that has at least 3 virtual discs and machines for Windows XP Home (that I have found so far). This is his first computer and he kept trying to set things up on it and apparently was having trouble with this. Parallels Desktop 3.0 for Mac is installed in OS X 10.5.2.

I have tried using Parallels Explorer and there is only one virtual machine and one virtual disc listed. In both cases the "Delete" option is greyed out and not available. If something is running I cannot see how or where it is to shut it down.

My thought is to find all instances of virtual machine and/or virtual disc and delete them from the hard drive by hand. I then want to completely uninstall Parallels and do a clean reinstall.

My questions are:

1) Exactly what types of files am I looking for to delete from the hard drive? .hdd is apparent, which other should I watch for?

2) How do I completely uninstall Parallels? There is no uninstall icon in the Parallels folder so I assume that I'll be uninstalling by dragging the Parallels folder into the trash?

My thanks for any and all help that I can get for this mess ;-)

Peace,
Gail

Edit:

Just found this article for uninstalling: http://kb.parallels.com/en/4790 I'll give that a try.

 

So no answer eh . . . .

So no one knows what files are copied and/or installed when virtual machines/discs are created?

Fascinating.

 

yes the application does

after choosing a file at start up
before clicking run (green triangle)

It is best to use PD > Menu >> File >> delete
being a Mac all is automated

I clone my best VM about once a week and delete the out of date ones in that way to make space on my external Firewire HDs

I always keep data in shared folders
not the WinXpSp3 defaults


Hugh W

 

Files and folders are:
1. Folder <Virtual machine NAme> in ~/Documents/Parallels
2. <Virtual machine NAme>.pvs file in folder on step 1
3. winxp.hdd bundle with DiskDecriptor.xml and winxp{GUID}.hds files