Unable to open virtual machine: possible to run disc Utility on hdd?

I have a copy of parallels 8 running within mountain lion. The virtual machine is running lion server and has stopped with unable to open virtual machine - I have tried restarting resetting but it just spins. Is it possible to access the disc to run Disk Utility check the permissions sectors etc as pressing alt on startup does not work? Or - Is it possible to mount the hdd within the virtual machine as a hd within the parent os?

Is there some other system?

Thanks

 

No, you can't mount a OS X virtual disk as a real partition to use in disk utility.

What you can do in a virtual environment is boot from the recovery partition or an OS X DVD. But your problem seems to be different, not related to permissions or anything like that, please post a screenshot of the error message, I would say the problem is fixable by pointing parallels to the correct virtual disk as it seems from your description that it isn't finding it.