Parallels will not mount my winxp.hdd

[chadwicktd]

I have had parallels runnung for about 4 months. Today I tryed to start up the virtual machina and it gives me the error: Parallels is unable to access the virtual hard disk image file. The file is corrupted.

any suggestions as to what I should do?

[iBecks]

Use the back up that you created, you did create a backup, didn't you?

[brkirch]

Here's an article from Parallels' knowledge base:
Error message "Hdd file is missing, corrupted, or used by other application" appears upon virtual machine startup (http://kb.parallels.com/entry/28/527/0/)

[yhc2k]

I know this is an old thread, but I had this same problem after upgrading to Leopard. I have checked multiple forums and none of the suggestions worked.

-I upgraded to the newest build (5582 I think).
-I looked for the .lck file--not there.
-I changed the name of the .hdd file--no luck.
-I rebooted my computer several times--no luck.
-I uninstalled and reinstalled Parallels several times--no luck.

Here is what solved this issue for me:

-Go to the winXP.hdd file (or windows.hdd file as the case may be) (under users/<>/library/parallels/Microsoft Windows XP/
-right click and choose 'show package contents'
-this should reveal two files: "DiskDescriptor.xml" and "windows.hdd.<lots of letters>.hds"
-right click on each of these files and select "get info".
-under each info window, check the "Sharing and Persmission" settings for each file.
-they should allow your user ID to read/write. I also made it so all of the permissions were the same between the two files.
-I am not sure if you need to do it for both files, but I did and it fixed my problem! ...so I'm not touching it anymore!

This cost me a full day of work! Hope it saves someone else some time...