I have a strange problem. I have three installations of Windows XP, and now one of them will not start. They are all very plain installations. I installed an educational program for my daughter: "Typing Instructor for Kids", which ran fine, but that was the only program installed. But now every time I try to boot her installation of XP, I get the "Windows did not start successfully". It will let me try to start in safe mode, but hangs for 10-15 seconds and then quits back to the Parallels VM config screen. I updated to the new build (1940) but no luck. Is it possible that I hosed the installation so quickly? I don't see how. I have this educational program installed on a Dell Dimension with no problems.
If I had three VMs and two worked and one didn't, I would not suspect Parallels of being the problem. Also, I would not assume that just because a specific program was installed, that that was the problem. It's entirely possible it's something you or your daughter did that corrupted the VM. In my experience, kids have a habit of pushing random buttons leaving parents wondering what happened. Why not clone one of your working VMs, install the program, and see if it happens again? It takes only microseconds to hose a system under the right conditions.
Mike, Try deleting the PVS config file only and re-associate the HDD file with a new config. Perhaps the config file now has a problem but the hard drive image is OK. Worth a shot...
Thanks Thanks for the suggestions. I agree, it is possible that my daughter clicked something that caused a problem. She has the tendency to install things without my knowledge --- like games she downloads from nick.com (Nickelodeon). But that's the reason I wanted her to use a virtual machine, rather than my actual one. But I will try both suggestions and see if I can resuscitate it... -Mike
