I delayed installing Windows SP3 on my MacBook Pro BootCamp partition because of some sub-conscience fear. If you think it will happen, it very well could – Parallels couldn’t get the Windows Virtual Machine to boot.

When I launched parallels the following screens showed up:

This was quickly followed by this screen:

Then it starting looping in those two screens. Never before have I seen a looping blue screen of death! After a brief investigation (translation: “low level panic attack”) and a few “force kills” in Leopard I found the solution to the problem on the Parellels Forum. For the masses of you who may already know about the solution: Great! For the rest who have been searching and haven’t found the solution this worked for me:

1. Select XP Boot Camp Virtual Machine but don’t start it.
2. Click “Hard Disk 1″ and open Configuration Editor.
3. Click “Advanced” on the right panel.
4. Click the “Clear” button to remove Parallels information from the boot camp partition.
5. Start the Virtual Machine.
6. When asked to Activate Windows say no.
7. Activate windows AFTER it has fully loaded.
8. Reinstall Parallel Tools.