Please help - I am using parallels on my new mac mini. I (well, not me personally) successfully installed windows and started to use it as normal, saving my work in the my documents section. However, I have come up against a problem resulting in me having to reinstall windows but I don't want to end up loosing all the work that I have done and saved to the windows side of my machine. DOES ANYBODY KNOW, is there a way I can retrieve my documents that have been saved in windows through Parallels without having to go through windows because I can not access windows until I reinstall it and I don't want to reinstall it until I know my documents are safely tucked up somewhere else on my machine. You are probably wondering why I didn't save my work to an external hard drive, well, that is the other nightmare I have been having, trying to get my external hard drive to work on the mac and windows - I do however believe I now have this sorted. If anyone can save me from loosing all my work, and communicate it to me in a non techy language, I will be beyond my self with sheer delight! In hope and anticipation............
first never ever save documents in a vm but always in shared folders and backed up off site second when you have a working VM clone it about once a week as a back up third what have you done that means you need to reinstall windows? WinXp sp2 is very solid and reliable if you do standard maintenance at a guess try making a totally new VM and mount the old disk image from there as if a second hard disk search the forums and knowledge base for how to do this make certain you have enough empty space on your hard disk ====================== If you can mount your present VM just clone it (file menu) to a new empty fire wire HD and run it from there you are not telling us enough to get a proper advice numbers needed of :- OSes PD - builds - ram - hd space AND exactly what error messages are you getting? Hugh W
OK - So it is obvious I am totally non-technical and shouldn't even be using computers! Well, it's not that bad, I'm just more of a systems user than a behind the scenes technical person, much like I drive my car but don't know what's under the bonnet, oh the shame. It's because I was reluctantly convinced to buy a mac when I am a PC user through and through, now I have problem after problem and after 2 months still can't seem to get my system up and running once and for all. I have to admit I don't even know what you mean by VM! I'm asking the wrong questions because I've never been into a forum before and was directed here by a friend of a friend out of sheer desperation! So, I will try and give you more info to put you in the picture of what has happened. I was in Windows doing some work when I decided my mac keyboard was driving me insane, so I decided to unplug it and plug in my friendly old PC keyboard. Little did I know that this would then not be recognised by my computer which in my interpretation meant I had to turn of the computer at the switch and start again. When I eventually logged back in and started up parallels my windows wouldn't let me in anymore. My trusty friend has attempted to find ways of getting into windows with no luck , he did an F8 thing but not even that would let him in. I think it wasn't installed properly in the first place. So, I now need to somehow access the documents that are saved in the windows side of parallels so that I can then uninstall windows and get someone to load it back on correctly. I went into the mac store and they reckon there must be a way of locating all files in parallels, but they couldn't expand on that. It's actually only 1 little folder I need to retrieve from windows where I store my partners business accounts - The rest of my files are pretty much up to date on my eternal hard drive which I access through the mac side of my computer. I wasn't using my external hard drive on windows because it wouldn't recognize it, but a "Mac Genuis" taught me how to set that up today. Now all I need to do is find the little folder somewhere in parallels, put it on my external hard drive so that I can remove windows, then put windows back on and then I will have definitely learnt my lesson about not saving my work safely! Do you still need Oses, rams and hard drive space? I'm not sure I even know where to find this information - Maybe I am beyond help!
Hello, Stoney, VM is a virtual machine. I have not much to add to what Hugh Watkins wrote. You should always povide that basic information when making a request on the forum. You can try to create a new VM with the existing virtual hard disk (.hdd file). If the file has not been corrupted, you will get access to all the information from your Guest OS on the new VM. To create a new VM read Parallels Desktop for Mac User Guide, p. 67 - Custom Installation. On the step 4 choose "Use an existing hard disk" and browse to the .hdd file. Best regards, Xenos
