I've had good luck with Parallels Desktop and Windows XP VM on my Mac Book Pro until last night.
I had previously set the VM to automatically boot to Windows XP (the only configuration I had) but, last night when I opened the VM, I was prompted to select the VM configuration. After I did, all hell broke loose as the OS loaded. I kept getting messages about registry errors that needed to be fixed. The boot-up did make it to the Windows Desktop where all of my .exe files appeared to have lost their file association and were now displayed as .lnk files with the exception of IE on the start menu (the IE desktop shortcut wouldn't work) and Outlook, both of which could be launched only from the start menu. None of the other program files could be opened.
I'm wondering whether I could do a Windows XP repair. If so, I believe I will need to boot from the Windows XP CD. How can I get the VM to boot from the CD? As I mentioned, the OS will boot up to the desktop but all of the background programs(virus scan, etc.), which now have a .lnk extension, are looking for an application to launch them and need to be canceled out.
Thanks for any help. I'd prefer not to do a complete reinstall although that might be necessary.
Tom
Last edited: Aug 24, 2006
