Where did my windows program go?

[Bluebeard]

Before I start my question, I must state that I am a very low level user of computers, so try to keep your answers relatively simple.

I purchased Parallels 5 originally in 2009, then upgraded in may of this year to V6. Last week, the hard drive in my mac mini started acting up and I had to have it replaced at the Apple Store. I was mesmerized by the new Lion OS and was told I needed to upgrade to V7 in order for my windows programs to work on the new operating system.

When the new drive was installed, I told the apple store people I needed to keep my old drive to get any info off of it in case I needed it.

I have re-installed my V6 and then purchased and downloaded V7 and it runs fine- except for the life of me, I cannot find the windows operating system on the old hard drive. Like a dummy I must have thrown away the old Windows discs because my usage was going to be minimal anyway, and now it looks like I may have to go out and buy windows again. Can anyone tell me where parallels refers to the windows OS in a mac computer? I have looked all over the place in just about every file in the old HD and cannot find the windows operating system. Does anyone have any solutions short of having to go out and purchase another one? Is there a way to transfer the old windows OS to the new drive, short of purchasing another license (I must have purchased 10 windows licenses over the years and have thrown them all away).

 

[DrKarl]

Bluebeard,

Your entire Windows virtual machine - operating system, programs - is in a Parallels virtual machine file. The location of that file depends on how you set up Parallels when you first installed it in 2009.

You are looking for a very large file with the extension ".pvm" (Parallels Virtual Machine). Mine has grown to be 35 GB.

I created my vm's to be shared by all users of my machine, so in my case, I can find my virtual machines in:
[Mac Boot Disk Name] > Users > Shared > Parallels

I forget where the non-shared location is ... but it is all written up in the Parallels documentation.

That huge file is all you need to have your entire previous Windows virtual machine running again. If you can find it, just copy it onto your new hard drive and just double-click your PVM file after copying it to start the virtual machine .. which the new version of Parallels will update and then update the Parallels Tools (rebooting).

Cheers,
Karl