Metro Boulot Dodo

A rather dull worKLOG. This is just a scratchpad for solutions to IT problems that might be useful to someone else. Expect no opinions, no brilliant insights and definitely no pictures of pets or children. Expect stack traces, code snippets and other hints for the Google Indexer.

Monday, August 13, 2007

Parallels screws up Windows

Since Parallels 3 has come out there have been a lot of complaints that it can screw up your Windows XP installation, resulting in an error like:

/system32/ntoskrnl.exe file is missing

Parallels has finally posted a fix:
http://kb.parallels.com/entry/30/516/

However, it doesn't tell you how to get your Parallels VM to boot from the Windows CD in the first place. The trick is to start the VM, then go to edit/Virtual Machine, and in there you'll find an option to change the Boot order to CD first.

In my case, this only partially fixed the problem, perhaps because I'd previously botched things by following other advice on the internet. The solution for me was to completely deinstall parallels (using the _installer_, weirdly), then reinstalling it. Be warned that this might then need you to reactivate your windows installation.
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