How to: Resolve trouble between Parallels and Windows under Boot Camp

Hard Disk 1 points to the Boot Camp partition. It actually points to the entire disk but only the Boot Camp partition is accessible and used. The other partitions are not accessible in Parallels so it won't get formatted by Windows even if you asked it to. If you look inside the .hdd, you'll see that it has it's own copy of your disk's MBR and GPT partition tables. All this means that it's possible to run multiple VM's that use different partitions on the same physical disk as long as each VM doesn't use a partition that is used by another VM that is running at the same time. If the hard disk contains multiple Windows partitions, then the Hard Disk options will allow you to select which partitions are accessible in Windows. It won't allow you to select Mac partitions.

Do you get "Unable to access hard disk 1" error when you try to start up the virtual machine or while it is running? When you startup a virtual machine that uses a Boot Camp partition, Parallels Desktop will try to unmount the Windows partition from the Finder so it can be used by the virtual machine. A partition cannot be unmounted if it has files in use by another application. If you have multiple hard disks (your Macbook probably only has one hard disk), then it's possible that after you reboot your Mac, the Hard Disk 1 might be pointing to the wrong hard disk and you need to change it back to the correct hard disk.

If you get the error message while you're logged into Windows (I don't see how that's possible), then you have a big problem and should use the "Report a problem" menu item as soon as you see the error message and while the error message is displayed.

 

I've only received the message twice today, but to add to the error message "Unable to access hard disk 1", it also says in the second line: Invalid parameter.

I'll try to capture the whole thing next time it happens.

"""If you get the error message while you're logged into Windows (I don't see how that's possible), then you have a big problem and should use the "Report a problem" menu item as soon as you see the error message and while the error message is displayed."""

I do indeed get this message WHILE using Windows 7. And it CAN'T be a big problem, because it is simply an irritation. Everything else is working fantastic. Certainly better than I hear from other people about their problems!

As I said, I think it MAY have something to do with the circularity of the fact that Bootcamp 3.1 now RECOGNIZES the Macintosh HD when you boot in Bootcamp, but when I boot with parallels - I have a "disk drive e" which parallels wants to format! (I could be totally wrong, that's one reason I'm asking!)

Now, that said, I probably need to figure out what the .hdd and so on files are and see if I can figure out what these files think is happening.

Everything boots fine, I can use everything fine, I can even see the Macintosh HD when I boot directly to bootcamp. Seems marvelous except for this occasional "hard disk 1///invalid parameter" issue.

Does anyone else have a bootcamp that can natively see the macintosh hd? Does anyone else experience this problem WHILE RUNNING PARALLELS normally in Windows 7 64bit (or any other variation)?

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Hard Disk 1 points to the Boot Camp partition. It actually points to the entire disk but only the Boot Camp partition is accessible and used. The other partitions are not accessible in Parallels so it won't get formatted by Windows even if you asked it to. If you look inside the .hdd, you'll see that it has it's own copy of your disk's MBR and GPT partition tables. All this means that it's possible to run multiple VM's that use different partitions on the same physical disk as long as each VM doesn't use a partition that is used by another VM that is running at the same time. If the hard disk contains multiple Windows partitions, then the Hard Disk options will allow you to select which partitions are accessible in Windows. It won't allow you to select Mac partitions.

Do you get "Unable to access hard disk 1" error when you try to start up the virtual machine or while it is running? When you startup a virtual machine that uses a Boot Camp partition, Parallels Desktop will try to unmount the Windows partition from the Finder so it can be used by the virtual machine. A partition cannot be unmounted if it has files in use by another application. If you have multiple hard disks (your Macbook probably only has one hard disk), then it's possible that after you reboot your Mac, the Hard Disk 1 might be pointing to the wrong hard disk and you need to change it back to the correct hard disk.

If you get the error message while you're logged into Windows (I don't see how that's possible), then you have a big problem and should use the "Report a problem" menu item as soon as you see the error message and while the error message is displayed.

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I successfully installed Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit in Bootcamp on my Macbook Pro 6.2 i7 machine. (That would be an entire article on the hassles to do so, but I did it!) Even got Bootcamp 3.1 drivers and NVidia video and wireless working.

In fact, it was SO good, that I even have a disk drive when Windows Bootcamp boots that POINTS TO The Macintosh HD! That totally surprised me, but I find that the latest bootcamp supports this (no more macdrive software needed!)

I then successfully created a VM in Parallels 6 that accesses bootcamp. Again, everything seems fine, EXCEPT, I periodically get:

Unable to access hard disk 1

at the top of my screen. Anyone know how to eliminate that?

Here is my SUSPICION: When opening windows 7 with parallels, the bootcamp windows 7 shows a hard disk e:, which would match the Macintosh HD when running in Bootcamp. But if you click on this in Parallels, it not surprisingly says "needs formatting" (can't access your own drive?). What scares the bejeebers out of me is that Parallels/Windows now offers to FORMAT THIS DISK! (I would hope it doesn't work if I said yes.... but I'm certainly not going to try!)

I THINK this the hard disk 1 it cannot access; but I like having it if I boot in bootcamp, but would like it to not be there when Parallels runs. Given bootcamp now supports this, I'd THINK that everyone would be having this problem, but I only find old reports about it.

Any thoughts or help? I got past most everything else - last step, I hope!

 

The below is the actual error message that comes up. Just came up twice, likely not to come up again for a while:

Unable to access Hard Disk 1

An error occurred when accessing the hard disk. Error ID: Invalid argument.



I am booted into Parallels Windows 7 64 bit bootcamp. Everything is working fine, except for this occasional message.

 

Sorry, n00b question.

Running 10.6.4 on MB Pro with a Bootcamp Partition / Parallels 6.0 VM running Windows 7.

What are the rules for using Parallels Suspend / Resume on a bootcamp partition? I seem to have good luck suspending/resuming the BC VM, except occassionally I get a "harddrive not found" when I resume. I have to kill the VM and then Windows says it wasn't shutdown successfully, obviously. No, I did not start the BC partition natively. This is strictly running in Parallels.

So is Parallels Suspend / Resume allowed with a BC partition? Any idea what's causing the resume problem?

 

Suspend is supported for Boot Camp partitions now in Parallels Desktop 6 but I would avoid it.

A "hard drive not found" message may occur if you have more than one hard drive attached to your Mac because Parallels remembers drives by number which are not always the same after the Mac is rebooted. If you get the "hard drive not found" message, then try reselecting the correct hard drive in the Hard Disk settings.

 

Was the multiple internal hard drive issue fixed is Parallels 6?

The problem mentioned above (wherein Parallels gets confused on Mac Pros with multiple internal drives which get renumbered by the MacOS at boot) Was this fixed in Parallels 6??

 

No, the problem still exists in Parallels Desktop 6.

 

I'm not using bootcamp, but i hope you can help.

i am pressing a combo of keys in Windows 7 that keeps suspending my machine. very annoying. can you help?

 

Guys, my I`ve installed paralles in bootcamp partition in my wife`s computer and mine. In hers, the bootcamp partition is showed in desktop of mac osx. In mine not! I cannot acess directly from finder, like I use to do when parralles is turned off. Do yoy know how can I solve it?
tks

 

Your Finder preferences are probably different.
Finder -> Preferences -> Show these items on the desktop

 

wow.. I see U like to help...lol...
But, I`ve already let my finder to show disks... My bootcamp partition is showed normally, but When I run parallels it desapears, and I cannot "see" it anymore. In my wife`s parallels there is a bootcamp folder (parallels folder, I believe) that is showed in desktop...
It is useful, because sometimes I just dorp a file into some bootcamp`s folder, then I run it from the virtual machine. `Cause now, I have to drag and drop it directly in windows desktop, for example..

 

The Boot Camp partition is supposed to disappear when you start a virtual machine that uses it because two operating systems can't own the same disk at the same time.

Do you have "Mount virtual disks to Mac desktop" enabled in Virtual Machine -> Configure -> Options -> Sharing?

If this setting is enabled and you have Parallels Tools installed in your virtual machine, Parallels will mount all the hard disks of the virtual machine in the Finder. This includes the Boot Camp partition. The hard disks will have names like "[C] Name" where C is the drive letter and Name is the name of the virtual machine.

 

Failed to configure the Boot Camp partition's hard disk

Very frustrated, followed a lot of the ideas in this forum to try and add my working Win7 bootcamp to Parallels and nothing seems to work at all. Getting the read/write permissions error and the dreaded "Failed to configure the Boot Camp partition's hard disk." Tried to create a BootCamp VM from the beginning, even tried to unmount the BootCamp disk, add a no disk VM, then switch to the BootCamp disk, no go. Please help. I have generated a Problem Report #7497833

 

Dear Brock,

here is the erro you had: Details = "Error: PRL_ERR_DISK_GPT_MBR_NOT_EQUAL (0x80021065)

The most probable reason is that Windows is incorrectly installed on the Boot Camp partition. As a result, the MBR partition table of Boot Camp is different from the GUID partition table (GPT) of Mac OS X.

To solve this problem, you need to install Windows correctly on the Boot Camp partition. For the detailed instructions on how to do this, please refer to http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/Boot_Camp_Install-Setup_10.6.pdf.

 

I am about to abandon Parallels entirely because of activation issues. Will the method of creating hardware profiles etc listed on page 1 work for Parallels 5 and Windows 7? All of my attempts at activation and using both Parallels and Boot Camp have lead to repeated requests for re-activation. With the time spent doing that I may as well be rebooting in Boot Camp and not using Parallels at all. I see that the same problem has been present in Parallels 6 too.

I would appreciate it if someone could link to some clear information on what steps to follow to get Parallels 5 and Windows 7 to successfully use an activated boot camp partition and keep the activation working for both methods of accessing Windows.

 

Dear Hart,

Please refer to the link below in order to troubleshoot the activation issue:

http://kb.parallels.com/en/9703

 

Thank you for this link. The fix is for Parallels Desktop 6 unfortunately (meaning downloading the specific build) and I'm working with Parallels 5. However, I did follow the procedure for activating twice listed in part 2, the second time using the automatic phone registration and it was unsuccessful. Windows continued to ask for activation. In another forum they recommend activating a third time by phone with a person.

I'm going to go through the whole procedure one more time.

 

Hello bulletproof,
I'm a Windows user who just bought a MacBook Pro. I've installed and I am using Parallels (Win XP/Win 7). My desktop computer is a PC running Win XP.

Reading your thread "How to: Resolve trouble between Parallels and Windows under Boot Camp" I'm wondering if it's about running Boot Camp *under* Parallels, I mean is Parallels running Boot Camps directly instead of Mac OS X running Boot Camp directly?

Thanks,

Andre

 

It's about using the same Boot Camp partition for booting either the Parallels virtual machine or the Mac.

Parallels can boot the Parallels virtual machine using the same Boot Camp partition that you would boot the Mac into.

The partition will have both Boot Camp drivers and Parallels drivers for whatever OS is on the partition. The Boot Camp drivers shouldn't affect the OS when it's booted by the Parallels virtual machine and the Parallels drivers shouldn't affect the OS when it's booted by the Mac directly.

 

Not seeing my problem on the thread

I am running a Mac Pro early 2008 with a Windows 7 Ultimate installation using boot camp on a drive of it's own. I reinstalled both OS X 10.7.1 and Windows 7 last week due to the 10.7 upgrade causing major issues, so both installs are fresh an current on updates. After I installed PDFM 6, I saw the "My Boot Camp" alias on the desktop and tried to open it. It does the setting up your machine 1 of 4 thing reboots and never gets past the "trying to boot from SATA 1".
I went into the configuration and had to change the HDD from another partition that didn't have an install on it, but that didn't fix the problem either. Any ideas? Windows 7 is portable and should handle the physical/VM hardware shift but this is parallels not finding a boot partition.