Another Parallels wont launch/black screen of death thread

This behavior started just last week. I click on the Parallels icon in the dock. My Boot Camp icon on the desktop disappears and parallels starts to launch. I get the “Parallels Tools initialization in progress...†splash screen on a black background. After a while, the “tools initiaization†screen goes away and I’m left with just the black screen and it hangs there. Windows never boots up. Interestingly, I *can* go into and out of full screen mode with alt+enter, but of course it’s just a full black screen. I’ve deleted the .mem file, but that didn’t do any good. I have to Force Quit to get out of the program and I have to reboot to see the Boot Camp partition on my desktop again.


I don’t have any important data on this partition (okay, there’s Quicken, but that’s backed up on a PC), so I want to uninstall and reinstall. The Boot Camp assistant allows you to “remove the Windows partition and restore the disk to a single-partition Mac OS X volume.†My question is: do I first have to uninstall Parallels, then use Boot Camp Assistant, or just start with the Assistant and let it wipe the partition for me?



1. Mac OS Version: 10.5.2
2. Parallels Build #: 5582
3. What kind of computer: Intel iMac, Core 2 duo
4. Total Physical RAM: 4 GB
5. Hard Drives: 1
6. Are you using a Boot Camp configuration: Yes
7. Did you upgrade from a BETA: No
8. With what Build did the problem start: 5582
9. Are Parallels Tools installed: I guess so. I see the “parallels tools initialization in progress..†splash screen
10. Anything you have tried to get things working: deleted the .mem file. That’s it.
11. Anything specific about your set-up you think we should know: nothing special
12. If you are crashing, upload some crash logs: there are no crashes; it just hangs
13. If you are getting an error message type it in and then attach a screenshot: there are no error messages, it just hangs
14. If you are having issues with a specific component (i.e. mouse, keyboard, monitor) tell us what it is: there are no issues with any specific component. the mouse and keyboard are responsive.

 

When I tried to boot to windows using Boot Camp, I got the following error: "Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: <windows root>\system32\hal.dll"

So I did the "Repairing Windows XP Installation" procedure using the XP disc and was afterwards able to boot to Windows in Boot Camp. I restarted and then tried to boot to windows in Parallels and got a new set of errors. See the attached "Picture 1.png". I'm sorta lost as to where to go now. Any advice would be appreciated.

Also, should I decide to uninstall Parallels, Xenos wrote in another thread that "Virtual machines are usually stored under Documents/Parallels/. There you should have an XP folder...which should contain .pvs and .hdd files. Move these folders to the trash".

When I navigate to Documents/Parallels, I see the .pvs, but not the .hdd. Is there another common hiding place for this? Spotlight didn't turn up anything and I'm worried that the uninstallation won't be complete without removing the .hdd. Any and all suggestions would be welcomed at this point.


James