This Product isn't Ready

With all due respect to the developers but this product is not ready. I can't install XP. It keep crashing during installation...

It would have been prudent to have tested this more thorougly than to jeopardize an otherwise great reputation with a product as faulty/buggy as this...

Damage Control - get the bugs addressed as soon possible, that is the only recourse here...

 

Can you provide more detail? What's crashing and how? Is it OS X? Parallels? The XP installer? Exactly what do you observe during the crash? Have you determined that your installation media installs properly on a physical PC? Damaged media is a primary cause of hung installations.

Odds are that the problem you're experiencing has nothing to do with Parallels. Lots of people here have successfully installed XP under Parallels.

I respect that you're frustrated by the crashes, but it's important to get all the facts on the table before pointing the finger at Parallels.

 

It is during the installation of XP. It freezes, reboots etc. One time it finished installing, XP kept crashing, fatal error usually.

I had no such problem with the original Parallels. I use an iMac 24, installing XP with SP1.

 

Is it by chance an OEM version from Dell or other vendor?

 

Dkp brings up a good point about OEM versions, although I'd expect the installation to go OK in that scenario and become a no-go during the activation phase.

Thinking more about it, I'm backing away from bad media. That usually results in a read error, after which you're given the opportunity to manually locate the file in question (or insert a known good CD). Let's dig deeper. How much RAM does your Mac have and how much are you allocating to your XP VM? Also, how much free hard drive space do you have?

What about trying to install in a VM with the more troublesome options disabled, temporarily at least. Try disabling USB, Coherence and 3D and see if you can complete an installation and boot it up. If you can, then we at least have a stable starting point from which to pinpoint the problem.

I'm still not convinced that you're experiencing a problem directly related to Parallels, although it's too early to say for sure.

 

Try doing a slipstream to transform your SP1 into a SP2. And also make sure you transform your CD into an ISO image, this will insure you do not have any read error from the media.

Lots of us have installed it successfully and are running it daily without issues.

Give more specifics, where did you CD come from? OEM, MS, from a computer?

 

I am going to try to get my hands on a SP2 version of XP. I attempted to slipstream it but wasn't successful. I will post an update.