I have a cloned vm and .hdd file (and the original) that I want to move to a new user account on my mac. The files work fine on the user account where they were created. In copying them to the user>shared folder, my computer claims they are corrupt. So I transferred them to an external hard drive and then into my new user account. I tried to reinstall the parallels software. However, every time I try to boot on the new user, I get this message: "Virtual machine cannot be started because of the following problem: Unable to get the geometry of the virtual hard disk. Perhaps file /Library/Parallels/winxp_build_april_02/winxp_build_april_02.hdd is not a valid virtual hard disk image file." The vm works fine on the old account, but won't transfer to the new one without the above glitch. Anybody know what this means? What am I doing wrong? How can I get this vm to launch on the new user account? Thanks, Andrew
Yipes! That sounds scary... Have you tried putting the drive into a public folder then giving everyone rw permissions and trying to mount it from there?
tried that... Thanks for the reply. I've tried shared folder. I've also tried placing the file in other shared-access folders and on an external hard drive only to get the same result. The VM still works on the original account, but it's such a hassle to switch back and forth and go in and out of parallels. Is there a limit on how many mac user accounts can access a VM? I don't post here often, but this forum usually helps me on most issues. I just don't understand this one. Andrew
Hello, Perform the following: 1. Put your VM (.pvs and .hdd files) to some place visible to other users of Mac. I usually place them to Users->Shared. 2. Change the permissions of the .pvs and .hdd files in the following way: right-click the file, choose "Get Info…". In the window opened expand the "Ownership & Permissions" group and "Details" subgroup. Set the "Read & Write" access to "Others" . After that you'll be able to use the VM with other users of your Mac. Best regards, Mike
Thanks Mike - that worked. I also found that the files can be kept in the macintosh HD>Library>Parallels directory with user permissions and everything works properly.
Thank goodness for support forums. Does v.3 still kernel panic because of bad permissions? Seems like something that would be useful to fix.
