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