Parallels has trashed the boot camp XP installation.

I installed XP/NTFS on my spare partition (I cant use bootcamp to install XP directly, as I have 3 partitions, but everyone tells me that installing it by booting from the CD is the same as installing it via bootcamp).

I then spent a day setting it up (drivers from X DVD, office, outlook, firefox, java development tools etc. but no virus checker.)

I then setup a parallels VM to use this partition as a boot camp partition, which worked great. It did its installing/initializing toos stuff, and all was good.

I never interrupted the initialization process. I always shut down XP from the start->shutdown option.

In fact, from when I setup the parallels VM, to when it killed XP, I did nothing with XP - changed no options, installed no apps (except the parallels tools, which worked fine).

Then out of the blue, the VM wont start, and when I reboot into windows, I get the error "Error loading operating system". between working and not working, I didnt do anything - no updates, no SW installs etc.

So parallels has taken a working XP HD installation, and done something to kill it (like a virus no?)

Now I'm faced with spending a day setting up XP again, and having parallels trash it again? I need to have an XP boot partition for all those apps which cant run in parallels (e.g. 3D apps, and games which I develop). I need a parallels VM so I can use things which dont run in OSX (e.g. MS project, MS visio, Oracle, toad etc). I cant have a image based VM and a boot camp one as I only have a small notebook drive - and there is no space for both. You cant replace the drive on a MBPro either.

Any Ideas?

Simon.

 

Parallels Desktop Configuration Editor -Hard Disk 1 -Advanced -click Clear

 

Cant find a clear button

Thanks for the fast reply.

I am In the Configuration Editor (from clicking on the "Parallels Desktop.app", have clicked on "Hard disk 1", clicked on the "Advanced" tab, and it gives me the following:

Device Geometry
:
Disk Format Boot Camp

Attachment Options
Connect to:
IDE 0:0

I cant find any clear button or menu option, unfortunately.

Any Ideas?

 

"In fact, from when I setup the parallels VM, to when it killed XP, I did nothing with XP - changed no options, installed no apps (except the parallels tools, which worked fine)."


Undo disks? That's not possible with a Boot Camp/native partition, there's something fishy about this setup...

EDIT: I re-read that sentence and it now appears to have a different meaning from what I understood first. It has nothing to do with undo disks, you mean what you say, that you didn't made any modifications in XP when you used it via Parallels.

 

I suppose you didn't clarify is your VM Boot Camp based or not

 

Anyway, the only reason for the Clear button not to appear would be that it a virtual disk and not a real Boot Camp partition, or rather, Parallels doesn't recognize it has one, maybe something to do with your 'undocumented' method of install?

 

I installed XP straight from disk on to an empty partition - Boot camp is only there to format a partition and ease the process for novicies I assume (and doesnt work if you have anything other than one big OSX partition).

Anyway, parallels worked fine with this setup, I just told it to use boot camp and it found the disk and worked beatifully. - Everthing was perfect - I could boot directly into OSX or XP using the option (ALT in UK) key, and I could use the partitoin as the VM in parallels.

Then I tried to start the VM in parallels one day, to actually do some work with it, and got the problem. Then I tried booting into XP using the option key, and got the "Error loading operating system"

i assume parallels does something scarey with the XP installation to make it work in a VM, and something went wrong with the process to put it back? (Although I always shut the VM down correctly etc). Is there a way to rescue it?

Is this something that there is a high risk of happening again - i.e. is the use of a phisical XP boot partition as the VM not 100% unreliable? If not - the Ill give up on it and try a different route (e.g. using external HD to hold an image type VM and keep the XP boot partition away from parallels).

Thanks for the help - this is a great forum!

Simon.

 

No, Parallels doesn't affect Boot Camp, it creates its own files sets, only in very rare cases, when forced reboot Parallels files remained on Boot Camp, therefore I asked to click clear button, if you cannot see Clear button, so you do not have VM based on Boot Camp, and it is not Parallels, that harmed OS.
Looks like you need to perform Windows repair

 

Before you do Windows Repair, try this:

Maybe, just maybe... On those other partitions you have on that disk, you installed an OS in one of them, between reboots under Parallels... The result would be that you have more than one possible 'Boot Camp' partition and now Parallels is confused.

Follow this article: http://kb.parallels.com/en/5063

(I know you don't get the error messgae the article starts with but it might still apply to you).