WinXP machine no longer booting after HD exchange

[PeterPan]

Dear all,
in conjunction with the Segate HD exchange program of Apple I got my iMac returned yesterday. I did save all data etc using Time Machine.
I did successfully re-uilt all my data and applications including Parallels 5. I just wanted to boot an WinXP VM.

Paralles comes back with an error Message. BIOS screen indicates that the IDE drive (boot HD cannot be found.
The message says the HD 1 cannot be found - a required file or device can not be found or I have insufficient permissions. (original message in german below)

Can anyone give me a hint how to allocate the new physical HD? Does Paralles store the serial number or similar??
I need to get that machine running given that it stores some data inside.

many Thanks!


Original Error message:
"Festplatte 1 kann nicht eingebunden werden.
Eine für den Betrieb von Festplatte 1 erforderliche Datei oder ein benötigtes Gerät sind nicht vorhanden oder werden von einem anderen Prozess benutzt oder Sie besitzen nicht die betreffenden Zugriffsrechte. Die virtuelle Maschine wird weiterhin ausgeführt, das Gerät wird jedoch getrennt. "

 

[Parallels User]

Well, these are the questions I really like in these forums, to help people recover their data.

Question: Is(was) the XP VM Bootcamp based?

If it was, I have bad news for you, that means it was in separate partition in your hard drive, it doesn't get backed up or is it restorable by Time Machine. In such cases a disk cloning application or specific Windows back up software should be used, I suggest Winclone (google for it).
If there was no such back up, it's lost. If it was backed up and put back on the new drive go to the VM's configuration: Hardware > Hard Disk 1 > Source > select bootcamp partition (it has the disk brand name and model next in it's name)

If it wasn't, the data is stored in a Virtual Disk inside the the .pvm file (normally located in ~/Documents/Parallels), in this case go to the VM's configuration: Hardware > Hard Disk 1 > Source > select "Choose image file" and navigate to the .pvm file (it's actually a folder), inside it you'll find a file with the extension .hdd and select it.

Instructions in English, consider the equivalent wording in German.

 

[PeterPan]

Dear Specimen,
it's not just about the data, Re-Installing WinXP today would require end virtually endless sequence of Update & Reboot which is with an Internet connection of 786kB/s (not kidding) close to a nightmare. In the details it's rather a technical question, still.

Anyway, It was/is not a Bootcamp based VM. Hence I did select as described the file inside the .hdd Package. Unfortunately this does not change anything.

What worries me is that even in "older" Time Machine Backups this file is sized with 0kB. So it is in my current folder. Selecting the file as described the configurations says "Expanding Disk: 64 GB) the location os IDE 0:0.
Bootsequence is fine; however the status bar on the lower end of the VM Window indicates a disconnected drive still.
Pls see the .tiff attached.

Do you have any further idea - you would save ages in re-installing the Installation.

Many Thanks for your assistance!

 

[Parallels User]

Dear Specimen,
it's not just about the data, Re-Installing WinXP today would require end virtually endless sequence of Update & Reboot which is with an Internet connection of 786kB/s (not kidding) close to a nightmare. In the details it's rather a technical question, still.

Anyway, It was/is not a Bootcamp based VM. Hence I did select as described the file inside the .hdd Package. Unfortunately this does not change anything.

What worries me is that even in "older" Time Machine Backups this file is sized with 0kB. So it is in my current folder. Selecting the file as described the configurations says "Expanding Disk: 64 GB) the location os IDE 0:0.
Bootsequence is fine; however the status bar on the lower end of the VM Window indicates a disconnected drive still.
Pls see the .tiff attached.

Do you have any further idea - you would save ages in re-installing the Installation.

Many Thanks for your assistance!

I understand the pain of losing data, I'm a hardened techie but lost data always has my empathy.

There's one easy way to know if you have a valid virtual disk, simply, the size of the .pvm package, in Finder, navigate to the folder that has your virtual machines (~/Documents/Parallels by default), select the <virtual machine name>.pvm, right click on it and select "Get Info" from the context menu, look for the size, if you have a valid virtual disk with Windows it should take some GBs (at least 5 GB I would say). If it's just some MBs, then it's impossible to have a valid Windows XP installation in there, the file is corrupted, useless.

You can also check the size of your .pvm in Time Machine backups via the same method in Time Machine.

 

[PeterPan]

Hi Specimen,
now this turns into a 'technical' issue.

I did check the .pvm File both on the HD and in TimeMachine.
The latest versions are about 300MB - former versions (approx. 6 month old) are about 128MB in the Time Machine.

This seems strange to me given that I am using this VM since more than 2 years. Inside the VM there is a pure WINXP installed running two Win. based applications which in total are about 60 MB max.
I did just restore some of the older versions of the VM out of TimeMachine to the desktop. Browsing these .pvm's it shows that the parallels.log file is 293MB. The WindowsXP-0.hdd file contain 20kB.
It's similar in much older 'versions' that Time Machine did backup.

The HDD01 of the VM was set to expanding Disk.
In the konfiguration tools I can neither compress the drive nor change the size. The here associated error is their either the file is damaged or contains snapshots.

Does that turn into a TimeMachine issue ??

 

[Parallels User]

Just the install of Windows XP alone is about 2 or 4 GB, 300 MB (~0.3 GB) means you can't possible have the virtual HD there with Windows installed and all the rest. As it turns out those 300 MB are just log files, the HDD file is... empty.

I'm afraid I can't help you, the VM apparently wasn't properly backed up.