Cant's start Windows following upgrade to Parallels 6

After upgrading to Parallels 6 my Windows XP installation won't start:

"Windows XP could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \ WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM"

It suggests booting from the XP installer disk but I can't get it to boot from the CD-ROM. Even though its in the drive I get "There is no operating system installed in this virtual machine. Please insert an operating system installation CD into the optical drive of your Mac and restart the virtual machine." and enter an infinite loop.?

Any ideas anyone?

 

i am assuming you are trying to get back into a previously running version of windows XP.

it would seem to me that recent versions of parallels are less than friendly about starting from anything but the most basic places. (i used to have an easier time importing a VMWare VM into parallels, but that is no longer an option, so for any upgrade, i [1] backup my version of Parallels [2] back up all of my VMs; and [3] cross my fingers!.)

can you still mount the old VM with the Parallels Mounter (i.e. as a virtual disk on your mac)? if so, then one option would be to install the OS from scratch from your CD-ROM, and then pull over your data from your mounted VM. you might even be able to refer to it as a second HD in your new VM configuration.

 

Thanks: that's helpful. Yes I upgraded over a previously running version of windows XP (presumably like countless others). I didn't know about Parallels Mounter but yes I can mount the old VM. Fortunately most of my critical documents had been stored in Mac folders but it was good to be able to check and recover the few that weren't. I had already spent the few hours necessary to install a new VM and go through many cycles of Windows updates!

This really shouldn't have happened: not so much the 'corrupt' WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM as the inability to boot from the original CD-ROM and fix the problem.