Successful Boot Camp partition in build 3120 now "non-standard" in build 3170/3186

Hello everyone. Have Parallels installed on an iMac (early 2006) with an existing Boot Camp partition. Originally started off with build 3120, which worked fine from said partition. However, since I upgraded to build 3170 (and now 3186), Parallels now refuses to boot up Windows from the Boot Camp partition! I keep getting the following error message:

"More than one Windows partitions are found. This is not a standard Boot Camp configuration. Please refer to the Parallels Desktop for Mac User Guide, Using Boot Camp Windows XP Installation chapter for instructions on how to configure Parallels virtual machine in case of a non-standard Boot Camp configuration on your Macintosh computer."

I've checked and doublechecked the User Guide, and have found absolutely nothing on the subject. Last I checked, I was still able to boot into the partition using Startup Disk, so the partition seems to be standard enough for the computer. Any ideas? Thanks in advance!
-Adam

 

I've attached the exact error message box I'm getting. I've been getting this very same error since I updated to build 3170 from 3120. I had a thought: perhaps the error is some sort of extension of an issue that upgrading from 3036 to 3120 apparently caused, that the Parallels Tools is causing an issue? If so, how would I go about removing them? Again, thanks in advance.
-Adam

 

I had the same problem. It work after i unplugged my external NTFS formatted USB drive. Quite annoying, actually. I hope it will be fixed in a future version.

 

Original issue solved, but another problem

Well, I've figured out the problem. I did a search of the archives, and found that the message is triggered when a USB mass storage is plugged in. I unplugged my Maxtor 3200 external hard drive (itself a source of headaches within 3120, since the VM found it, but wouldn't mount it), and XP booted as normally from the Boot Camp partition. A rather annoying solution, but a solution nevertheless.

However, this has brought up another issue. Once I booted up XP, I tried to plug in the hard drive again, to see if the changes since 3120 have finally allowed it to boot. Unfortunately, I got the following error message from Parallels once I tried to connect it: "USB device you are trying to connect to the virtual machine is being used by another application. Close that application or unplug the device and plug it again. Then try to connect the device again." Upon clicking OK, the drive then mounted in OS X. I ejected the drive from OS X, and tried connecting to it again. Same error, and the drive mounted yet again in OS X!

I shut down the VM, and enabled AutoConnect (got the non-standard warning again before I ejected the HD and disconnected it) to try again. Unfortunately, once Windows had booted and I plugged in the HD, I got the exact same message, followed once again by the HD mounting in OS X once I clicked OK! Almost seems like connecting it gives OS X another excuse to access the drive, and it conflicts with Parallels. Any ideas on how to solve this new issue? As always, thanks in advance!
-Adam

 

Solved the other issue

Hello again, everyone. Figured out the problem with the external drive. It had to do with one of my attempts to get around the fact that my Maxtor external drive wouldn't mount normally in Parallels from within 3120. I had the whole of the drive selected to be a shared folder within Parallels, in an attempt to copy the contents of the drive onto a virtual HD which was also on the Maxtor. That always ended up in a corrupted virtual HD, so I moved the virtual HD file to the main Mac drive, which made for a working copy. Once this was done, I had disabled the shared folder, but left it there; apparently, this wasn't enough for Parallels, and it kept trying to access it anyway every time I tried to access the (now working!) Maxtor from within the VM. Simply deleted the shared folder, restarted the computer (started getting weird errors about the Parallels driver), and all is now well. Thanks for all the help. Once this "non-standard Boot Camp partition" error is gotten around, the system should be nearly perfect.
-Adam