Comments on: Parallels RC2, Boot Camp, Windows XP, OS X - One Happy Family On My Mac

By: CodeNinja

CodeNinja — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 15:48:00 +0000

USB may be fixed, but fire wire… not so much…

I have a 500gb FW External drive, AND build 3188. When the dirve is plugged in, (even if it’s not mounted), Parallels refuses to boot to windows.

I just wish I had found your article before I reinstalled windows… that would have saved me a day of hacking.

At least I know the problem… just be aware of the FW problem.

By: Julian Doherty

Julian Doherty — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 01:24:00 +0000

rhys - the later versions of Parallels fix the problem altogether, without the need to work around unplugging the external device.

By: rhys

rhys — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 16:27:00 +0000

Hi Julian… youre a star! I have a setup similar to some of your readers with all my tunes on an external HD (also my onenote files on a usb drive). I could not work out for the life of me why i was having these problems with parallels not working sometimes. Anyway… a long story short… im sorted so thanks.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 03:01:00 +0000

Thanks for the tip

By: Julian Doherty

Julian Doherty — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 02:52:00 +0000

Parallels Desktop for Mac build 3188 released on March 7 2007 seems to have the “More than one Windows partitions are found” error fixed. You can now have external HDs plugged in and start a bootcamp VM in Parallels. This is a full production release (ie not a beta).

All good

By: Mark

Mark — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 18:40:00 +0000

Same goes for me! thanks to your article I found out the HDD was the problem.

Thnx!

By: Julian Doherty

Julian Doherty — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 02:43:00 +0000

No problem beattz. Glad I could help

By: beattz

beattz — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 23:54:00 +0000

Thanks for documenting your problems with running Parallels while you have an external USB drive mounted. I have been running Parallels for a while now but yesterday I uninstalled it, installed a Boot Camp partition, then re-installed Parallels to run from that, in order to be able to boot into WinXP for some 3D gaming, of course Everything worked beautifully first time and had no problems. Anyways, this morning I started up my machine as usual, and I got that Parallels error message. Before I committed to tearing chunks of my hair out I Googled the error and found your article. Saved me a lot of time and frustration trying to troubleshot. Thanks!!

By: Michelle K.

Michelle K. — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 01:42:00 +0000

oh gotcha. Thanks anyway

By: Julian Doherty

Julian Doherty — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 02:24:00 +0000

Hi Michelle. What I meant when I said that is that, is that the NTFS drive is plugged in and viewable in Mac OS X. When that happens, Win XP won’t boot up in Parallels till it’s removed.

I haven’t actually tried accessing the drive contents through XP though, just Mac OS X. Sorry I can’t help much.

By: Michelle K.

Michelle K. — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 02:20:00 +0000

Hi! I noticed you mentioned you were able to access an NTFS formatted external harddrive within your Windows when running Parallels on your OSX. I have a macbook with Parallels running WinXP home. When I first run XP, and I connect my external, Parallels notifies me that something is blocking my external and not allowing winXP to see the drive. I also see the harddrive on the desktop of the osx. Do you by chance know what could be blocking the harddrive? I’m also pretty new to osx, so any instructions that you could possibly give me would be great. All my tunes are on that harddive!