Upgrade to 4.0 - Fatal Error

I upgraded my Macbook Air to 4.0 today. The installation went fine until step 2 of 4 in the conversion of my VM from PD3, it said that a manual process was required and it then put me into the VM (Win XP) and the software (PD4) crashed. Upon reboot, I was able to get back into PD4 and continue the upgrade but again it launched me into the VM with the same manual installation error. After i went through the process I was able to navigate the VM BUT the next time I started PD4, I got a fatal error message and now PD4 can't find any prior VMs and requires that I install a new VM.

I am desperate at this point - after two hours on the phone with India all I have to show is a ticket number (622164). Further my backup is corrupted.... I fear that I am SOL

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated

 

Please launch Parallels Desktop, then go to Help->Report a problem, send the report and provide its ID here.

 

Report ID 14664

 

Your VM is still in Home->Documents->Parallels

Please:
1. Perform Mac disk permissions repair: open Applications->Utilities->Disk Utility, select Macintosh HD to the left and Repair Disk Permissions to the right.

2. Update to build 3540

3. Once updated, start Parallels Desktop, click File->Open, browse to Home->Documents->Parallels and open the Microsoft Windows XP.pvm file. This is your lost VM, it should be added to VM directory.

4. Start the VM and re-attempt the upgrade procedure.

Please let us know how it goes.

 

Is build 3540 a stable release, and recommended for all Mac users?

 

This build is recommended for those having issues described in Bugfixes and Improvements section at http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?p=133595#post133595

 

Problems still

Did the following:
"Repair Permissions
downloaded & installed build 3540
opened and ran 4.0

While going through step 1 of install Iturned away and when I looked back the Parallels windows was black with no login or anything, all the while the Parallels icon in the Apple taskbar has a red bar rotating aroudn it.

At the bottom of the Parallels window it says "Parallels Toos is not installed. From the Virtual Machine Menu, choose install Parallel Tools." Since nothing had happened for a good 5 minutes I choose to install Tools and nothing seemed to happen. Meanwhile, the red bars around the Parallels icon stopped.

I'm stumped and frustrated.

 

hammer1,

Looks like for some reason Windows doesn't like the video adapter driver actually installed in your VM.

A workaround for the issue is rather complicated, but should help:

1. You need to mount your VM's HDD using Parallels Explorer (found in Applications->Parallels).
2. Browse to your Windows Disk C: root.
3. Right-click the "boot.ini" file.
4. Select "Open With..." -> "Other".
5. In the Window opened, find Text Edit.
6. Edit the boot.ini: append "/basevideo" to it. This is how it looks before editing:

Code:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

and this is how it should look after

Code:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /basevideo

6. Save the edited boot.ini. Close Parallels Explorer. Boot your VM again.

This time you should see a graphics instead of blank screen

 

Finally............

Shut Down Windows, Configured to Other/Other and Close, Configured back to Windows/Windows XP (noticed it mentioned 428MB as Optimal when the reading in the window was 512, so changed it to 428), Started Windows logged in and currently finishing Steps 2 through 4.

My hope is that someone will send out a special email to all who've purchased Parallels Update 4.0. Otherwise, more frustrated customers will be jumping ship.

 

Hammer1,

Is it possible that you have edited the amount of Video Memory assigned to VM as well?

 

Build 3540 will not run for me. It launches the install menu but stops there.

I did locate the .pvm and attempted to open it with original build (3522). However, it still brings me to the operations detection.

 

I'm experiencing similar issues, although I have been too scared to do anything since the last time I tried to re-install Parallels tools (I couldn't boot the VM, and luckily had a snapshot to revert to). I keep getting intermittent "Tools not installed" messages, yet coherence, mouse, networking, etc all work fine.

 

I'll check once it finishes installing Parallel Tools.

 

parallelsmba,

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Can you make a screenshot of that?

 

I did all the above was finally able to get 3540 to load. Still no luck though - when I try to open the .pvm file it takes me to the "new operating system assistant - operating system detection" menu.

Please advise

 

Sorry, it is the New Virtual Machine Assistant - Operating System Detection. It is looking for a windows cd image to install a new operating system

 

Ok. Please,
1. Close Parallels Desktop.
2. Right-click the VM's .pvm file.
3. Select "Show Package Contents"
4. Attach here the config.pvs and config.pvs.backup files found in the bundle.

There's definitely something wrong with the VM configuration files, I need to check them. Thank you in advance.

 

config.pvs
config.pvs.backup

 

Here are the files

 

parallelsmba,

Ok, the reason for VM trying to redetect the OS is clear, the config.pvs file is corrupt.

Please replace the config.pvs with config.pvs.backup (simply delete config.pvs file and remove ".backup" from the end of backup file).

After that re-attempt to start the VM.