What??? Parallels LOST my Virtual Machine

P

PerpendicuIars

Bit poster
Has anyone had this happen?

I just went to open Parallels and received a message that I needed to activate the software. I dug out the old email and reactivated, but there is no virtual machine - No Windows 7, no programs that I had installed on Windows 7 - nothing. It just gave me the option to install a new virtual machine via CD or other media. I have had Parallels running since roughly May of last year.

Is my Windows virtual machine completely lost? If so, I will not be able to deactivate my CAD and Office software and thus lose a seat allotted to the license.

Snow Leopard, Parallels 6
 
Hello.
Please try to use Spotlight - try to search for "Windows 7.pvm" (if you have Windows 7) or just ".pvm" and check if Spotlight can find a file.

It should be in your Documents/Parallels/ folder.
 
Huh...mine did the same thing today. worked fine yesterday. today I launch parallels and it wants me to install from dvd or from one my computer. i found the backup, but it has to reinstall everything...terrible
 
Well I started up from my backup clone. Ran disk warrior and permissions, rebooted from the main drive and parallels started right up...not sure what happened, but boy am I relieved.
 
Statman said:
Huh...mine did the same thing today. worked fine yesterday. today I launch parallels and it wants me to install from dvd or from one my computer. i found the backup, but it has to reinstall everything...terrible
Click to expand...

Actually, it's highly unlikely that it "lost" it or that it's unrecoverable, unless it was deleted, but Parallels wouldn't do that for any reason without user interaction, and it's also extremely unlikely there is a "bug" that deletes the VM. So, like Yana replied, it's probably in the computer somewhere, and most likely it was accidentally moved (one of the many hypothesis) but if you recovered from backup you may also have deleted the latest version.
 
What I mean by "lost" is the link between the Parallels software and the vm must have broken...when parallels started up it was as if it was the first time I had used it. In any case it works just as before after rebuilding the drive and repairing permissions. It was strange though.
 
You can find all of your .pvm files by searching for .pvm in your finder. Then just click on the .pvm file.
the finder window will give you the exact location of your file.
for me its My UserAccount name: ka -then documents -then Parallels -then the .pvm file
 
What next after you find the .pvm file ?

The same thing happened to me: I have been using Parallels for Windows 7 for no problem. My vitual machine list also includes Windows Vista. This morning my virtual machine list was empty and parallels booted up as though I had never used it before: asking for an activation and prompting me to install a virtual machine.

Supposing that I the .pvm file, what do I do next?
 
Had the same thing happen last week after OS X did an update. I checked Time Machine and the .pvm file suddenly went from 17gb to 9mb one morning. Parallels would report that no operating system was installed.
I had to restore the pvm from a backup but lost files that were explicitly created within Windows since the previous backup.
 
This has just happen to me. lost all my embroidery designs and programs
very unhappy can't find out where to retrieve them
Parallells just said can't find windows need to use CD or other media
 
SandieW said:
This has just happen to me. lost all my embroidery designs and programs
very unhappy can't find out where to retrieve them
Parallells just said can't find windows need to use CD or other media
Click to expand...

In order regain access to your embroidery designs, have you read the the whole thread and tried any of the possible solutions?
 
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This just happened to me. I installed an update and now the virtual machine or windows 7 is nowhere to be found. These applications are only used to access the jovian archives MMI, which I now have no access too. All of this is expensive software. Where is the virtual machine?
 
I also have the same problem. i located my ppm but the problem is, it is saying that no boot data is available. i checked on the settings, it is booted in hdd.
 

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wow, unreal this just happened to me.
Versions:
osx: 10.13.4
parallels: 11.2.3
vms: Ubuntu 18.04

I had 2 Ubuntu VMs running, and I clicked the close ("x") on both of them. Parallels asked me if I want to close/suspend, I selected close.
The both machines disappeared from the Parallels Desktop Control Center.
I went to /Users/<username>/Documents/Parallels/ and to my surprise they are gone. Not in the trash either. They were deleted by Parallels software.

I run find to search for all pvm files from the root directory, and they're gone. Deleted.

I think the problem here is that Parallels thought the the VMs were still installing and I selected "stop" to stop the installation. I assumed it was just to stop the VM because these VMs were running for some time.

I won't use Express Installation again!
 
This *JUST* Happened to me, the exact same scenario above.

I was running Parallels, Windows 8. Everything was working fine in the morning. I paused the instance and then I rebooted my laptop and tried to fire up Windows again, only to discover my entire Parallels directory was blank.

I did not delete the PVM's. I was not prompted to delete them. No they were not moved, nor manually deleted.

They are just gone.

I ran 3 recovery programs for deleted files, and the only thing it could find related to Parallels is 2 - 4gig "LNK" Files. I highly doubt this is any of my files though, Visual Studio is something like 17 gigs alone.

This just cost me, not only over a week of work, but maybe thousands of dollars from a client deadline looming that I can now not reach.

The PVM is just gone.

I'm absolutely furious.

macOS High Sierra
Version 10.13.4
15 Inch MacBook Pro, 2.9ghz, 16 GB / Ram

Parallels Desktop 13 for Mac Pro Edition
Version 13.3.0 (43321)

I'm so screwed right now. Like literally, lost a client because of this.
 
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