No Bootable Drive available - XP already installed

Discussion in 'Parallels Desktop for Mac' started by joelmusic, Aug 5, 2006.

  1. joelmusic

    joelmusic Bit poster

    Messages:
    6
    I installed Parallels as a "trial" version 2 months ago, bought Windows XP Home, successfully installed and used Windows on my MacBook. Now, the trial expired, I bought Parallels, downloaded it, installed it, and now it can't see Windows installed on my computer.

    What I have tried:
    My boot sequence is Hard Disk, Floppy Disk, CD ROM
    In my configuration editor I have the hard disk assigned to:
    user/library/parallels/winxp/winxp.hdd
    There are also other drives in there as I have experimented trying to make it work:
    Clone of Parallels
    winxp1
    winxp2

    Since I went through the whole installation process before, and have run XP on the trial version, am I missing something fundamentally wrong with how I am trying to run windows?

    Thanks in advance!
    :confused:
     
  2. majortom

    majortom Member

    Messages:
    98
    Strange. I Installed the final release on an RC(something) and got no problems (both with the trial key). The I bought the license and just inserted the code # into the requested menu/field.
    Try booting from the FreeDOS HD (http://www.freedos.org) as HD #1 ("C") and set your Win HD as HD #2 ("E", supposing "D" is the CD-ROM). Then perfom some checks on it to verify if it is corrupted or something else.
    I have no other ideas.. sorry...

    PS: check permissions from Mac OS X Install CD.

    Perform also an Uninstall from the installer package and reinstall. It may be that some lybraries are not well installed.
     
    Last edited: Aug 6, 2006
  3. joelmusic

    joelmusic Bit poster

    Messages:
    6
    Thanks for your help. Before I try these things, I think I may be missing something fundamental about how this works. I already installed XP on my MacBook when I was using the Trial Version, and it worked fine. I then:

    Downloaded the purchased version of Parallels
    Un-installed the Trial version
    Installed the new version
    Now it doesn't see Windows on my hard drive.

    Do I have to re-install Windows after this process? If so, should I un-install it first? I would think if I had successfully installed it on the Hard Drive, that I should be able to have Parallels find it as a Guest.

    Anyway, again thanks for your help - I think I need some conceptual clarification before I attempt this.
     
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  5. joelmusic

    joelmusic Bit poster

    Messages:
    6
    Thanks Sharkus -

    I have completely wiped my MacBook clean of all hdd's. I could see about 4 before I un-intsalled everything - however they all were pretty smal - not even a meg. Definitely not the 1.5 Gig one that has been mentioned. Basically, I should be able to see the hdd file, from spotlight, however, even before I deleted them, I made sure none of them had XP in them. very odd. Anyway, I am about to re-install everything, but I have a sneaking suspiscion that somewhere in this MacBook Windows is lurking, and I'd like to know where. If it is as cut-and-dried as - if there isn't an hdd file, then Windows isn't installed - then I'll head on and re-install Parallels and XP, in that order. However, I NEVER (I swear) deleted a hdd file with XP on it, and have felt like I am missing something fundamental here. Parallels tech support has been horrible -

    Oh well, thanks for the reply - let me know if you have any ideas.
     

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