Hi, Here is my quite specific problem. I upgraded Parallels to the latest betabuild, impressed by the great new features. I had bootcamp installed on a new Macbook Pro, running Windows XP and MAc OS. I downloaded the new Parallels build and instructed Parallels to integrate with Bootcamp, so I didn't need to install a second copy of XP. This is what panicked me: 1. After a reboot, HAL.DLL is missing if the Parallel setup is selected. 2. If I choose the normal Windows XP (2nd option), everything is fine (phew) 3. If I press ALT to boot from Macinthosh, the HD is doing overtime. I get the Apple on the screen, but it's not booting after 30 mins (then i did a reset). I need to have an escape route, so I put my laptop into the hands of you, the Parallels pro's. Here's what I hope to achieve. 1. Can I remove Parallels from the Mac partition without entering the Mac-partition (The answer I expected is NO, but hey, I never expected that Parallels can run Windows application without showing Windows) 2. Can I remove Bootcamp to get back in MacOS? How? Keep in mind I can only access the Windows XP. Or do you have other suggestions? Basically, I want my Mac back with the MAC OS and I'm in search of a method to achieve that.
Try this: Insert your Mac install CD, and boot while holding the C key to start from the CD. Select your language, and click next. Then from the menu (which may take some time to appear) select Disk Utility from the utilities menu, and repair your Mac disk. If it finds and fixes problems, that might solve your problem. Then you can boot OSX and use bootcamp assistant to remove the bootcamp partition if you like, and do a fresh install of Parallels and a guest. Note that beta means buggy almost by definition, and a full backup of your Mac to an external drive before you start playing with it could save you some headaches. I've trashed my disk a few times and recovered from a backup. Much easier than finding all the goodies and reinstalling them.
I use SuperDuper from Shirtpocket software. Their free version will back up an entire drive to an external in, for my environment, a couple of hours. The paid version will copy only changed files (and new ones, deleting deleted ones) and is much faster for updating a backup. I use several external drives and rotate backups so that if I miss a problem and back it up, I can go back another generation. FWIW, I've had many of the problems that folks have complained about here of things getting trashed, and backups have always saved me from having to rebuild the machine. You can copy a virtual hard disk (the .hdd file) to another location on your Mac disk as a backup in case your guest trashes its HD, and that's proved useful quite a few times when beta software ate the virtual disk.
