Windows OS disappearing...

J

jfkane

Bit poster
Hi,

Back in September, my OS (Vista) disappeared. I shut down parallels one day and the next day when I restarted, Parallels asked me to install the OS. I did and today, it happened again. I shut down Parallels and my computer last night and today it asked me to install the OS! I can't figure out a) what I'm doing that is causing Vista to disappear or b) how to "repair" this issue without reinstalling the OS *again*.

Has anyone else had this problem? Does anyone have any suggestions on how to fix my issue without reinstalling Vista from scratch?

I tried searching for an answer, but I haven't been able to find anything... I'm running Parallels desktop 3.0 build 5608.0 and Mac 10.4.11.

Thank you!
-Julie
 
Hello Julie,

First of all, your Virtual Machine hardly went anywhere - check the /Documents/Parallels subfolder in your user folder, it should be there. Specifically we are looking for ***.pvs and ***.hdd files - these are the constituent files of a version 3 Parallels Desktop Virtual Machine.

Most probably you try to start your VM that you shut down yesterday (by the way, did you use Windows 'shutdown' button or just turned your VM off? be advised that it is strongly recommended to shut your system down properly to avoid system corruption) and encounter some error message. Is this the case? If it is, please let us know what error message is displayed exactly (a screenshot will be much appreciated) so that we may investigate the issue. Alternatively you may submit a ticket in our free e-mail support service - you can access it here: http://www.parallels.com/support/desktop/request/
 
True, the .pvs and .hdd files are still there. They were there last time (in Sept) also, which made it easy to get my files back once I reinstalled the OS.

I tried to shut down through the OS, but Vista crashed and so I stopped the VM instead and then quit parallels. When I start Parallels, it immediately jumps to "Select Operation System installation mode" (see attached screen shot). When I double click the .pvs file, it tells me it's not a valid Parallels virtual machine configuration file (see attached screen shot). I'm guessing I either can't load parallels from the .pvs file or it got corrupted when Vista crashed and I quit Parallels?
 

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Looks like the configuration file got corrupted somehow along the way. Please try creating a new Virtual Machine based on your existing .hdd file - create a custom VM and go through the steps until you are asked what kind of .hdd you wish to use. Select 'existing image file' and browse to the .hdd image. Finish the process of the VM creation, try running your new VM and see if it works fine or if any error messages are displayed, If the latter is the case please provide screenshots for us to look into.
 
Well, I'm using the latest build of Parallels 4.0 and after shutting my machine down normally last night, this morning it says that my hard disk does not have an OS on it... Go figure.
 
1. Right Click on pvm bundle - Show Package Contents
2. Right Click on hdd bundle - Show Package Contents
3. Move hds file to Parallels folder - if only one is there
4. Rename it to hdd
5. Click Configure - Hard Disk 1- choose - select recent renamed file, click ok to Convert,
6. Start VM

And before doing this of course backup your VM, other wise you may lose all data
 
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