I keep getting the OS Installation Assistant

J

jbmelby

Member
This build works beautifully for me . . . except that every time I start Parallels, I have to go through the OS Installation Assistant and recreate a VM before I can open my existing XP VM. If I click "Cancel" to get out of the Assistant, Parallels quits. It appears that even though my "Microsoft Windows XP.pvs" file is correct, Parallels does not know where to look for it. Is anyone else having this problem? I've found only one other report that appears to be related to mine, although I may not have entered the right parameters in my search.
:confused:
 
jbmelby said:
This build works beautifully for me . . . except that every time I start Parallels, I have to go through the OS Installation Assistant and recreate a VM before I can open my existing XP VM. If I click "Cancel" to get out of the Assistant, Parallels quits. It appears that even though my "Microsoft Windows XP.pvs" file is correct, Parallels does not know where to look for it. Is anyone else having this problem? I've found only one other report that appears to be related to mine, although I may not have entered the right parameters in my search.
:confused:
Click to expand...

jbmelby,

if I understood you correctly, you are about to open your virtual machine, but the VM Catalog doesn't show it? I suggest you to try the following:

1. Open the Finder and locate your virtual machine's configuration file (*.pvs)
2. Double click it
3. The Parallels starts, opens your virtual machine automatically and starts it immediatelly.
4. Power off the virtual machine (applicaion quits automatically)
5. Next time, you can simply start the Parallels either from Application folder or from Dockbar. If you have a single virtual machine in the catalog, it opens automatically (but not start). Otherwise the list of virtual machines list will be displayed.

Otherwise, if the case is that you open your virtual machine but it never displayed in VM catalog, then try to do steps above, then look at the folder: ~/Documents/.parallels-vm-directory (the folder is hidden), and report us if you can see the alias created for your virtual machine in this folder?

Regards,
Serg

Parallels Development Team member
 
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Nope. If I start it by double-clicking the .pvs file, that's what happens. But if I open the application from the dock or by double-clicking the application itself, I get the OS Installation Assistant every time.
 
I've got the same problem. .parallels-vm-directory was empty, but putting aliases to the .pvs files in there fixed it.

I'm also not getting the requested desktop aliases. I wonder if it's because I'm using Path Finder...
 
I am using Path Finder as well. Maybe that's why?

Dezro said:
I've got the same problem. .parallels-vm-directory was empty, but putting aliases to the .pvs files in there fixed it.

I'm also not getting the requested desktop aliases. I wonder if it's because I'm using Path Finder...
Click to expand...
 
Serg Clein said:
Otherwise, if the case is that you open your virtual machine but it never displayed in VM catalog, then try to do steps above, then look at the folder: ~/Documents/.parallels-vm-directory (the folder is hidden), and report us if you can see the alias created for your virtual machine in this folder?
Click to expand...

My problem was due to the fact that I have no ~/Documents folder; instead, my ~/Documents was an alias to a separate partition on which I store all of my documents. When I created a .parallels-vm-directory folder on this partition and put an alias to the .pvs file in it, the problem still existed. However, after I replaced the alias in my home folder with a symbolic link to my documents partition, the problem was solved; the change from an alias to a symbolic link did the trick.
 
I tried your suggestion, using the following;

Code: 
ln -s /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/Users/joe/Library/Parallels/winxp/winxp.pvs /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/Users/joe/Library/Parallels/Microsoft\ Windows\ XP/Microsoft\ Windows\ XP1.pvs

This did not work... Could you please elaborate on how you fixed this.
 
jafenske said:
I tried your suggestion, using the following;

Code: 
ln -s /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/Users/joe/Library/Parallels/winxp/winxp.pvs 
/Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/Users/joe/Library/Parallels/Microsoft\ Windows\ XP/
Microsoft\ Windows\ XP1.pvs

This did not work... Could you please elaborate on how you fixed this.
Click to expand...

Yes. My documents partition is called "Documents_HFS+". I typed this into the Terminal to create the
.parallels-vm-directory folder:

cd /Volumes/Documents_HFS+
mkdir .parallels-vm-directory

I then went to this folder by selecting "Go to Folder . . ." from the Finder's "Go" menu and entering
"/Volumes/Documents_HFS+/.parallels-vm-directory" (without the quotes); this opened
the folder in a window. Then I made an alias to my .pvs file and moved it into this window.

Then, in the Terminal I typed

cd ~
ln -s /Volumes/Documents_HFS+ Documents

That's all there was to it.

But my problem was that I previously had no ~/Documents/.parallels-vm-directory,
since I had replaced the Documents folder that would normally have been in my
home directory with an alias to my documents partition, so Parallels had not been
able to create the folder there and put the alias to my .pvs file in it.

What you appear to be doing is creating a symbolic link to your .pvs file in your
/Users/joe/Library/Parallels/ folder. What I was doing was creating a symbolic
link to a documents partition that I had put in place of the ~/Documents folder.

Unless I misunderstand you, what you should have done instead is simply to
make an alias to your .pvs file and move it into your
/Users/joe/Documents/.parallels-vm-directory folder, assuming that such a
folder exists. That should solve your problem.
 
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