PSF Invalid Character Error

Hi, have noticed that a couple of packages I've tried installing on my XPSP2 VM (e.g. Dreamweaver 8.0.2 updater) return the error message "The Documents & Settings path contains an invalid character" which prevents me from installing the software.

Presumably this is due to the \\.PSF\MyMacHomeFolder address that I've redirected "My Documents" to. Has anybody else come across this problem, please, and if so what (if anything) did you do to resolve it)?

Thanks in advance.....

 

Seriously, has nobody else come across this? Or am I the only one to point the Windows 'My Documents' folder to a Parallels Shared Folder. This is actually causing me some real grief at the moment (almost every application I try to install complains that the path is invalid). Any advice from some of the Parallels guys would be gratefully received.....

 

Don't know if this is any help, but got another possibly related and possibly more helpful error message when trying to view an XPS document in my .PSF folder. It went something like this:

Startup URI: \\.psf\HuwsDocs\Documents\Business\blah.xps
Application Identity:

System.UriFormatException: Invalid URI: The hostname could not be parsed.

....which makes me wonder if the problem is that the path should contain the local XP machine name prior to the .psf bit. Any way I can modify this, does anyone know?

 

Try this..

On your desktop, double click on the Parallels Shared Folder icon so you can see which folders are shared.

I'm assuming your shared your entire User folder or maybe your documents folder, I dunno, but for example, on my machine, I shared my entire user folder (ie: /Users/stokkes), so when I double click on the Parallels Shared folder icon, i see one called "stokkes"

What you can do is right click this folder and choose "Map Network Drive". Simply map it to another drive letter, ie: E:\ or F:\ , etc

This way, your documents can be mapped to E:\etc... instead of something like \\.PSF\stokkes\etc...

Windows usually likes the letters a bit more

 

Fantastic suggestion stokkes! Thanks very much for this. OK, I've tried it and although I had high hopes it would work I'm still getting the same errors - I think there must be something else going on.....

 

Hrm...

This is interesting....

What if you don't use parallels shared folders at all? What I mean is go into your System Preferences, then click on Sharing. Enable "Windows File Sharing"

You'll then have to enable your account and put in your password. You'll see in the Sharing preferences the path to your Mac's share.. Mine is

\\cookbook\stokkes

I then go into Windows, and map the folder \\cookbook\stokkes\Documents (or whatever) to F:\

See if this works.

If this doesn't work, it's most likely a dreamweaver issue (being picky about things) and not a Parallels issue. Atleast you can rule out the fine folks at Parallels if it doesn't.

Let me know!

 

Thanks for the suggestion stokkes. You're absolutely right - it's not a Parallels issue, but rather a Windows registry one. Here's what caused the problem to occur:

1. old windows-based laptop had two drives (C: and D: ). Software installed on both.
2. New MBP-based Parallels VM had only one VHD drive (C: ) and one VCD/DVD drive (D: ).
3. Used Laplink PCMover to migrate apps from old laptop to new VM (in the vain hope it woud actually save me time without having to re-install everything from scratch)
4. Because of missing D: hard drive on target VM, and lack of smarts in Laplink (it seems), VM registry entries all over the place pointing to non existent path causing the reported error message when attempting to do various random stuff (e.g. uninstall, re-install software).

What really freaked me out was sometimes stuff worked, and sometimes it didn't. It was only when I realised this was dependent on whether there happened to be a CD-ROM/DVD mounted in the D: drive of the VM or not that it dawned on me what the cause of the problem was. Once I realised that (up until that point I thought it was complaining about a problem with the PSF path), the fix to the problem was to either:

1. manually edit the registry entries pointing to the wrong drive location (e.g. using regedit)
2. leave a CD in the D: drive and then attempt a fix/repair or uninstall/reinstall of the software
3. not use Laplink PC Mover to migrate to a different configuration target system in the first place

 

Why not start over and create a VM with two drives and copy the configuration as is? I have an app installed on D on a PC that I want to run in a VM, so I copy it to D on the VM and it works fine.

FWIW, I avoid using the registry in software I write whenever possible. It's the first thing I'd get rid of if I were rewriting Windows. Yea Mac.

 

You're absolutely right, joem - if I'd kept the same two drives that existed on my old PC on my new VM then actually I'd probably have been fine.

However, one of the reasons why I ditched the old PC and went virtual in the first place is because I was fed up with having to worry about space/partition management and juggling things between those two drives.

In contrast, migrating apps between my iMac and the new MBP was simplicity itself using nothing more than a firewire cable and the Migration Assistant - one day all software will be made this way.....

 

With expanding drives, juggling space isn't required. Make them both very large, and they take up only as much space as the data you add. You only need to manage the total space. Try making both as big as the free space on your physical drive.

 

I have the samre problem - what's the best solution?

So I'm getting the same error you describe above and would *really* like to have a solution to this problem.

It seemed to me that I could solve the problem by moving the install package to the desktop and going from there, but I get the same error and clearly I'm missing something.

Thanks a bunch for your help in advance.