I ran into some problems booting my Windows 7 VM this morning. It says "No OS found" for some reason and I cannot get back into Windows. If I re-install Windows 7 from an .iso, will it erase all my programs/settings/files from the corrupted installation? Is it resetting to 0 or just re-installing the windows files? thanks
It will if you do it from scratch. There is no easy way to retain everything as reinstalling Windows generally overwrites some third party programs (long explanation as to why). The error you are getting could also mean that the entire VM has already been wiped. You can actually mount the drive and see if any of your files are there-find the VM itself, right click (or ctrl+click) and select "Open with Parallels Mounter". If it loads and you see most of your files, then by all means reinstall. If it gives an error, or is corrupt, then for some reason your VM got corrupted. General causes of corruption is instant shutoff of Parallels (reboot, force quit, or power outage). I also recommend you check if you have snapshots set up that you can revert to. If you are doing timem achine backups, chances are you have auto gaurd turned on. Right click the VM in question in your parallels window (where it lists all the VMs) and click manage snapshots. See if you can go back in time when it worked.
