External HD and USB Flash

I'm all the sudden having trouble using my Western Digital Mybook Hard drive (USB 2.0) and my Sandisk Cruzer U3 Flash drive (USB 2.0) within Windows. They load in Mac and even when I eject them I still can't get Parallels to open/mount them.
It sees them in the 'devices' pane but gives me the follwing message...
'USB device you are trying to connect to the virtual machine is being used by another process. Wait 5-10 seconds, then try to connect the device again. If this does not help, find the application that blocked up the device and disconnect it manually'
This has never happened before and I haven't changed anything.
Any help here?
Thanks,
Andy

 

way i got mines to work was to simply start windows on parallels from windows xp.pvs, instead of opening parallels main window and then pressing the "Start virtual machine." if done right, it should immediately prompt the keychain password from you without you having to do anything. make sure you're inserting the USB devices after windows is loaded up otherwise parallels will confuse it for another partition.

 

How do I 'start windows on parallels from windows xp.pvs', exactly?
thanks for the reply

 

Where do I find 'windows xp.pvs?
Thanks

 

use spotlight.. but it should be in ~/Library/Parallels/<your vm name>/

 

You forgot to mention which build of Parallels you use. If you upgraded Mac OS X to 10.4.9 then you must use build 3188 after that.

 

same problem

I'm having the same problem. OS X 10.4.9, build 3188. It used to work. No more. I've tried enabling USB Autoconnect as well, it doesn't help -- it just triggers the error message automatically when I insert a thumb drive or external USB hard drive.

I found the pvs file referred to in this thread, double clicking it makes no difference.

*** Edit: the second time I opened from this file, it worked. I can mount USB drives again in Windows. Very strange. But good, for the time being. The weird thing is that I had previously been opening Parallels from a shortcut to the pvs file. The shortcut lives on my desktop. Now regardless of how I open the pvs file, from the shortcut or directly by double clicking on the original, I can mount USB drives.