I'm running Win XP SP2 V/M under PD4 on my iMac OS X 5.8 (without Bootcamp). After upgrading to PD4, everything seemed fine ... for awhile. Since I'm not a heavy user, it had been some time since I had last opened PD4/Win VM. Then one night I decided to open Windows to download updates. My V/M failed to open and gave me some obscure and ambiguous err msg. I was over tired and made some bonehead decisions. Instead of getting some help, I decided to try to do some things on my own... big mistake. I decided to revert to PD3. Got advice on how to do that and tried to follow instructions which included uninstalling PD4. When all was said and done, I was unsuccessful in getting back to PD3, and am now suspicious that my winxp.hdd file is corrupted. I have PD4.0.3844 back on my desktop, but when I attempt to start my WinXP V/M, I get a screen that says "Please wait while the virtual machine is upgraded" and presents a progress bar that gets about one fifth of the way across the screen. At that point, the window momentarily goes to a black MS-DOS-like screen and then immediately goes to the Win XP startup screen. At this point everything hangs. I do have a winxp.2.pvm file saved off in my Docs folder. I have no idea how reliable it is. I could really use some hand holding and guidance on what to do next. From what I'm reading in the forums, I'm beginning to think I should reinstall PD3 (unless there have been some substantial improvements in speed and reliability). Other than religiously installing updates to PD4, I have no idea why it suddenly went Tango Ultra. Please advise.
If this is the backup of a .pvm file made prior to performing a downgrade - there is no trouble. Just uninstall PD 3.0, install PD 4.0 and double-click on this .pvm file. In any case, you can try it this way: 1. Backup all the mentioned files: copy winxp.hdd, winxp.2.pvm to some other place. i.e. external hard disk or some folder on Mac. This way no matter what happens, you will still be able to get back. 2. I am not sure what have you performed to downgrade, so try uninstalling PD 3.0 and install (re-install) PD 4.0. 3. Open, for example, winxp.hdd by right-clicking on it and using "show package content" option. You need and .hds file that is inside (if there are several of them, then this is snapshots and you need the oldest one). Drag it out, rename to winxp.hdd and try creating a new virtual machine based on it. (Custom Installation Mode), 4. You can do the same with .pvm file, it opens the same way as .hdd. And if this all seems complicated or you are not quite certain, it is still better to create a support request: http://www.parallels.com/support/request/ The e-mail support is free.
