MacPro, parallels and Bootcamp

[ericthered]

Please help.

I have WinXP (SP2 fully patched) installed in bootcamp on a seperate drive in my Mac Pro. (in bay 2 if it matters) and have been unable to get Parallels to boot this install in a VM for a couple of weeks now. I have posted this issue on both this forum and the Parallels site, in addition to e-mailing the specifics of my configuration to the parallels support team.

The support from parallels has been horrible *if you can call non-existent horrible* but I thought I would try again on this forum as the posters here are at least mostly helpful.

My problem started when XP - running in a parallels VM froze after the computer went to sleep. I was forced to quit parallels without shutting down windows *yeah, this is a bad think to do but nothing else worked*

After that, XP was corrupted and I had to repair it to get it to boot in bootcamp. Since the install was repaired, I have not been able to get this install to boot in a VM.

XP boots just fine in bootcamp and works pretty flawlessly.

Any suggestions?

 

[-Alan-]

I've never used Parallels but intend to use it when I get a MacPro. Like you, I intend to install Windows on a second drive in bay two.

What I gather, when Parallels is installed it alters the Window's boot configuration and then adds Parallels Tools to the Window's install. Since you repaired Window's boot, I suspect Windows can no longer run on your Parallels setup because the altered Windows boot configuration no longer exists.

What I would do is remove the current Windows VM from your Parallels setup. Then I would boot into Windows via Boot Camp and uninstall Parallels Tools via "Add and Remove Programs" in the Windows Control Panel. I would then boot back into OSX and create a new VM for your Windows install again. Of course this would be the optimum time to update your Parallels install to the latest build just before you create the new VM.

Again, I've never used Parallels but this is how I would approach the problem.

Out of curiosity, are you able to run all the programs you installed into Windows via Boot Camp? I have one program I need to use in Windows and plan on installing everything via Boot Camp and then accessing it via Parallels. Hopefully this will work. (?)

 

[ericthered]

I tried to do just that but unfortunately that did not work. Apparently this isn't a real standard configuration and all that Parallels tech support could offer is a suggestion that I repartition the drive, reformat it and start over. (It took a complaint to the BBB to get tech support to even speak to me, so beware - Parallels tech support is practically non-existent at this time)

I haven't done that yet but plan to when I have sufficient time. Everything runs just fine under bootcamp. I haven't found anything that doesn't act just as expected.
If you do decide to use parallels, make sure you have a drive image backup. There are a number of users that have had their bootcamp XP partition destroyed by parallels according to reports on their forum.

http://forum.parallels.com/forum53.html