I've posted this to the parallels forums but I thought I'd see if any of our WAMUG gurus had any suggestions/answers:
---------- POST 1: ---------- I just installed parallels 3 (build 5582) on my 24" 2.4 GHz intel iMac running 10.4.11. I imported a vpc virtual machine (running a fairly old version of xp pro) that I had been using on my old (G5) iMac. This all went well and I had the machine up & running and fired up some windows software (the reason I need windows on my mac). VPC had been such a dog on the G5 that it had been a LONG time since I had updated windows, so I thought before I put too much time/effort into inputing all my data I should bring my virtual machine up to speed. I set the windows auto update going (but with it set to ask me before downloading and installing - in case I needed to stop for a while!) and many hours of downloading, installing, downloading, installing ensued. It was all going fine until I got to the SP2 upgrade. I got a bit nervous when, for the first time, the installer warned me to back up all my data. So, since I already had several hours invested in the updates to then, I backed out of the installer, shut the machine and cloned it.... that's the good news! So I restarted the machine and proceeded with the upgrading - the sp2 upgrade seemed to take a real long time but finally it said the installation was complete and prompted me to restart - which I did. Only now I get the black screen which says "We apologize for the inconvenience, but Windows did not start successfully. ........" I have tried all the options of safe starts and the "last good configuration" option but all just come back to the black screen. My cloned pre-upgrade SP1 machine still starts up OK. So now I'm trying to work out my next step. I desparately need to get on and actually do some work - so do I: 1) just stick with my (working) SP1 configuration (which MS says is out-of-date & not supported) 2) clone my working machine again and try the upgrade again - my instinct say this would just be a waste of many hours and lead to another broken virtual machine 3) is there a way to actually access/troubleshoot/fix the broken machine which has the hours of SP2 intallation invested in it. The only variable that comes to mind is that during the SP2 installation there was a message along the lines of ... some of your hardware has been changed by third party do you want to let the installer overwrite this... if you do, the third party applications may not work correctly... if you don't very bad things will happen (I don't remember exactly what but it sounded bad enough to make me say go ahead - do what you have to do!!) Only now I'm wondering if the third party application was parallels and if this is what the problem is (on the other hand the message implied that windows might self-destruct if I DIDN'T let it have it's way) The only other posts I've seen seem to all refer to installing via stand-alone windows licences - but the whole reason I got parallels was it said I could import my VPC virtual machine which is my only valid windows licence (and, to be fair, it did successfully let me import and run said machine - its just updating windows that's proving to be a problem) Since lots of people did use VPC and must prefer to now go to parallels, I'm hoping that someone has already encountered (and fixed!!) this problem. TIA --------------- POST 2: -------------- Replying to my own post... I decided to see if the installation warning/writeover was the problem so I cloned the working sp1 machine and went through the upgrade process again - but this time said NO when it wanted to overwrite - nothing quit or died and the installation completed. However, as before, when the machine restarted I got the same Windows did not start black screen. Again tried all safe start modes and "last good configuration option but all gave the same outcome. So I guess I'm stuck with using my working SP1 machine until I work out what the problem is. Any suggestions? Help please! -------------------------- So, anyone on WAMUG gone this route (import VPC machine and upgrade from SP1 to SP2 using the windows update application) & if so how did it go. Am I missing something obvious here? TIA Neil -- Neil R. Houghton Albany, Western Australia Tel: +61 8 9841 6063 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml> Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml> Unsubscribe - <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
