mods please approve my thread i simply need help with boot issue

i get this icon when i boot up what gives? i am running el capitan virtual machine on catalina

 

check the VMs HDD is still connected

 

it says in parallels its connected as you can see but in finder its gone

 

So if you go to the folder where the VM is, right click to view the contents, then the vHDD is gone?

 

is this what you mean? i dont see vhdd

 

The vHDD in the folder is called "macOS-0.hdd" in the image, but it's Really small, so there's not a lot of data inside it. I'd make a new VM (new name of course, I like to name mine by the OS) and go from there.

 

if i make a new vm the same issue will happen again so why is this happening simple question? i have a sandisk cruzer usb plugged in thats where the el capitan vm is installed so why do i get the prohibitory symbol?

 

Oh, you're running this off an external drive. I've seen many posts where Parallels doesn't really support doing that all that well, so it could be as simple as that. Hopefully we'll manage to get the eye of an actual @parallels person on here for a clearer understanding.