Installation fails for 2.0Ghz Macbook/XP Pro SP2

Hi,

Brand new Macbook. Downloaded Beta 3. Parallels seems to install just fine. Registered with 1-month key. If I do the following:
Open Parallels
Make a New VM
Create a typical VM
Guest OS Type: Windows
Guest OS Version: Windows XP

Leave everything else at the defaults, let it create me/Library/Parallels/winxp.1

This leaves me with a small-looking VM, 256 MB memory, 8000MB hard drive, but I'll trust the defaults. FWIW, I've tried 512MB/20000MB with the same results.

The other default options seem to match the ones listed in the quick start guide.

I put the Windows CD in the drive and click the Power On button.

Everything looks reasonable for a while .. blue DOS screen installing lots of stuff. After a few minutes, it says "Setup is starting Windows" it then waits for quite a while and says "Unknown hard error" and something about ntdll. I don't know the full message because right after it crashes, I'm returned to the Parallels Property Page view.

Any guesses/tips/obvious things I'm doing wrong?

I can provide more details as necessary.

Thanks,

-michael

 

Does anyone have any ideas? Is this the correct forum for this question?

 

One more cry for help before I switch over to to Boot Camp ..

 

i've had the same problem with my Windows version of parallels - cleaning up the disk from dust helped me

 

Have you tried making a ISO-image of the Win XP disk? Use apple Disc Utility, select the WINXP cd-rom (the cd-rom, not the cd-drive) and choose File - New - Disc- Disc-image from "name of your device". Then save to some file, be sure to select CD/DVD-image as the file format. Afterwards you can boot from this one.

 

Those both sound like good ideas. As long as I'm going to retry things, I figure it can't hurt to be serious about it. So, here's the plan

1) reinstall OS X from scratch
2) update to the newest version of OS X
3) make sure the WinXP disk is dust free
4) make an iso image
5) download the most recent Parallels Beta
6) install from the iso image

I'll be back when that's done.

Thanks,

-michael

P.S. I find it pretty funny that people report ~10 minute install times for WinXP under Parallels. It looks like it'll take around 9 times that long to install OS X on the MacBook Pro itself .

 

My XP installs have gone pretty quickly. Of couse "10 minutes" is just for the XP install -- not for an OS X install too.

Have you tried doing an XP install to a PC (or a VM on a PC) to make sure the CD is ok?

 

10 minutes seems short to me I did an XP Pro install and I think it was faster than previous installs, but I think it was at least 20. OS X install I did the other day did take at least an hour. Doesn't seem right, but I guess OS X is installing a number of quality apps with it.

-Will

 

Yeah, OS X is installing a *lot* of apps. I think that's why it's taking so long.

I've used this disk before to install XP on a PC. It doesn't have any obvious scratches/dust on it, so I think it's probably good. I don't have a PC with a lot of spare HD space to try it out on, though.

 

Give the ISO route a try. I did my XP Pro guest install that way. Worked like a charm.

 

I'm having some trouble doing this .. the options it gives me under the save as dialog are "read -nly", "compressed", "read/write" and "DVD/CD master". Of those, read-only, compressed and read/write want to make a .dmg file and DVD/CD master wants to make a .cdr. Nothing wants to make an ISO. I tried the .cdr file, but I can't get Parallels to recognize it under the CD/DVD-ROM dialog.

 

You can create a .dmg file, and then convert it to an iso with the following command in a terminal window:

hdiutil convert /path/to/filename.dmg -format UDTO -o /path/to/savefile.iso

 

OMG PONIES!!

Using the ISO image, I've gotten XP to install. Took ~40 minutes. Thanks, folks!

It doesn't connect to the network yet, but that's probably just a matter of reading some more documentation, tweaking some settings, etc.

Thanks again!

 

Well done & congats!!

In my experience of inslalling (what feels like) millions of XP installs on PC's. XP installs are very fussy with three things - optical drives - Media - & memory. If you get hard errors change media & optical drive - if you get "failed to copy such & such a file" errors then replace ram.

Matt