[forumhound]

Hi, all was well forever, and then today I opened up a PD VM window and windows boots as expected and the desktop graphic shows up and that's it. i can't get to a start button or desktop icons. The XP is functioning however, I can alt-ctrl-del to get the process manager up and I can get to a CMD dos box to actually run programs. However, I can't get explorer to come up, even after killing it in process manager and restarting a new task. Weird. But I really need to get it going as I have some windows work to get out for client.

I am a backup freak and had a winclone of the partition from awhile back when I am sure it worked, so I loaded that, and still have the same exact problem...seems like it may be a PD snafu? I have tried unhiding/hiding dock and desktop in PD interface to no avail, but it does seem like the problem may lie there...reinstall PD?

I also tried creating a new instance of the VM window, and still get the same results in the new VM instance....arg!!!
thx,
FH

[ghporter]

I've had Parallels glitch on me once—not exactly the same symptoms, but it kept the VM from running properly. I reinstalled Parallels (actually updated to the latest build) and that cleared it up for me. It can't hurt for you to try that.

[forumhound]

Thanks Glenn! it was some lost chains on the WinXP hd. As soon as I ran a chkdsk in recovery console and rebooted all was fine. arg, windows!

Ps. Promise to go to the Tibetan camp for ya in the Am!

[ghporter]

Cool. I'm glad you got it working. Those lost chains are most likely from poorly written software, or from that "less than perfect" power grid you've discussed before. Buffered writes can play havoc with file saves if there's even a tiny glitch during a buffer dump to disk; the file will be written no matter what, but unsuccessful attempts leave debris all over the disk.

And I'm looking forward to seeing what you get at the camp. Thanks.