transfer files from one pvm to another/bootcamp

Forgive me if this has been asked and answered before but I have been so far unable to find an answer.

I have an XP pvm and a Bootcamp Windows 7 partition/pvm. How do I transfer files and applications from the XP pvm to the Bootcamp setup. Do I have to be in Bootcamp from startup to do this? Or Parallels XP? Can I run both at once?

I am a Windows novice - twenty-five years on Macs, so not too technical please

 

Hello Roger.
Unfortunately, you will not be able to migrate your whole XP Virtual Machine to Boot Camp, because Parallels products do not support this functionality. However, you can transfer files (not applications) from you XP machine to your Boot Camp virtual machine.
To do so you should:
1. Shut Down both your virtual machines
2. Open the list of your virtuals machines (by selecting Windows->Virtual Machines List in the Parallels Desktop menu bar at the top of the screen in your Mac OS.)
3. Right-click (or Ctrl+click) on your BootCamp machine and choose Configure
4. in the Hardware tab click on the "+" below the list of devices and choose Hard Drive
5. in the Type choose Existing image file
6. In the Location go to your XP .pvm file (the default location is "~/Documents/Parallels/"), go inside the .pvm file and choose the .hdd file.

Restart your BootCamp virtual machine and you will be able to see the hard drive of your XP machine as a second disk, copy/delete/change files from that disk.

 

Hi MariyaA

Thanks for the reply. I understand about not being able to transfer applications - it was the files I needed anyway.

But

I have not yet imported my Bootcamp partition into Parallels 7 and have just tried to do so using File>New but Bootcamp does not appear as an option in the list at top of window, only Install Windows from DVD etc or Migrate from another PC. My Bootcamp partition is 120G. Could this be the problem? Is there a limit to Parallels VMs?

 

I've now resolved this - and have got all my data available now. many thanks