Cannot migrate using Transporter

I have owned my MacBook Pro for about a month and have spent that entire time trying to figure out how to migrate my old PC to Parallels. I have read the entire Parallels Desktop 4.0 manual from cover to cover, I have read the Transporter user guide PDF, I have actually done everything that I know how to do, but still can't get the image of the PC to load onto a virtual machine in Parallels.

By way of background, this MacBook Pro replaced a White MacBook for me. When I bought the Pro, I used Time Capsule to configure the Pro from my old White MacBook. In the White MacBook, I had been running Parallels 3.0 and had a single virtual machine operating within Parallels, which runs Windows XP Pro. I purchased Parallels 4.0 along with the MacBook Pro to upgrade Parallels functionality. Once I configured the MacBook Pro and installed Parallels 4.0, 4.0 opened and ran that existing PC just fine, no glitches between 3.0 and 4.0 loading the same PC image.

My trouble began when I decided to decommission an older physical PC I own. I thought I could migrate that machine easily to Parallels by creating a new virtual machine (VM) within Parallels separate from the existing one, then installing the image of the older physical PC onto that new VM.

First, I tried using Transporter and Transporter Agent in the PC to create an .hdd image of the physical PC on an external USB harddrive, then connecting that USB drive to my Mac and running Transporter in the Mac OS. I finally got Transporter Agent and Transporter to capture the image of the PC and save it to the USB drive, but when I ran Transporter on the Mac, it gave me in an error message that Transporter could not open the .hdd file.

Second, I hooked my PC directly to my Mac with a blue CAT6 network cable, then ran Transporter from the Mac to migrate the PC directly to a virtual machine in Parallels. This captured the PC image as a. hdd file on my Mac just fine, but I could not load that .hdd file using Transporter into a virtual machine in Parallels either.

I created a new Virtual Machine in Parallels just to host this PC, and gave it a different name from the one that existed in my old White MacBook. But when I ran Transporter's migration process, selecting the image created using the direct network cable method, the end result was a mirror of the PC that existed on my old MacBook. I don't need a duplicate of that machine, but rather an entirely different PC installed in a separate VM.

Can anyone tell me where I am going wrong or what I am missing here? After a month of trying on my own to figure this out, I give up. If you need more specifics, just ask.

 

In short, as I understood you have currently the .hdd file, that Parallels Transporter has created, on your Mac.
In that case, there is no special need to use Transporter anymore. The .hdd, as you probably know, is a hard disk image in Parallels 3.0 format. You should be able to do the following:
1. Create a new virtual machine in Parallels using the Custom Installation Mode.
2. When prompted, choose "use existing hard disk image" option.
3. Point to the .hdd file that Parallels Transporter had created.

That should be it, Parallels would convert the .hdd to the new format and create all necessary files.
Please, specify if there are any error messages on that step in case I missed it.