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'13 MBA Compatibility issues running Boot Camp partition in Parallels 8

milhouse994

milhouse994

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 8, 2010
141
32
Vancouver, WA
Wanted to share some knowledge with the community here.

Just got a new '13 MBA last night and have literally spent 6-8 hours trying to get Parallels to play nice with my Boot Camp partition. Windows 8 64bit running like a charm under Boot Camp, after following all the instructions, but when I go to Parallels and try and configure a VM using the boot camp partition I get stuck with the error, "Trying to boot from SATA Drive 1..." and "No OS installed". I've tried every workaround I can find on the internet including removing the Boot Camp partition and starting from scratch... no joy.

Looks like I'm not alone, a couple of us are reporting the same issues over at the Parallels forum and sounds like it's an issue with the '13 MBA's new PCIe architecture. Hopefully Parallels can get an update out ASAP to fix it.

Hope this helps.

Forum post in question: http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?287956-Can-t-start-Windows-8-VM-on-latest-MacBook-Air
 
Last edited:
Same issue here - Win8 in BootCamp works wonderfully, however, Parallels refuses to boot with the same SATA issue you posted. Oddly, there's a revision that was released on June 18 that says "Works with MacBook Air 2013," but when I checked my Parallels version, it matched - so, something is amiss: http://mac.softpedia.com/progChangelog/Parallels-Desktop-Changelog-17461.html

Any luck on your end?
 
FoxyKaye said:
Same issue here - Win8 in BootCamp works wonderfully, however, Parallels refuses to boot with the same SATA issue you posted. Oddly, there's a revision that was released on June 18 that says "Works with MacBook Air 2013," but when I checked my Parallels version, it matched - so, something is amiss: http://mac.softpedia.com/progChangelog/Parallels-Desktop-Changelog-17461.html

Any luck on your end?
Click to expand...

Yeah, I noticed that. Not sure what aspect of "works" they are referring to :p

I opened a ticket with Parallels and had an email this morning from them with a fairly stock and frustrating, "try following this kb article" which was just introductions on how to install it from boot camp partition. I responded and gave them steps by step of what I'm doing. Sounds like everyone with a '13 MBA is having the same issue, so it should be easy to reproduce and hopefully fix.
 
methinks it is an issue with Apple switching from a SATA-based SSD to a PCIE-based SSD. Parallels might not yet be patched to boot from a PCIE drive!
 
milhouse994 said:
Wanted to share some knowledge with the community here.

Just got a new '13 MBA last night and have literally spent 6-8 hours trying to get Parallels to play nice with my Boot Camp partition. Windows 8 64bit running like a charm under Boot Camp, after following all the instructions, but when I go to Parallels and try and configure a VM using the boot camp partition I get stuck with the error, "Trying to boot from SATA Drive 1..." and "No OS installed". I've tried every workaround I can find on the internet including removing the Boot Camp partition and starting from scratch... no joy.

Looks like I'm not alone, a couple of us are reporting the same issues over at the Parallels forum and sounds like it's an issue with the '13 MBA's new PCIe architecture. Hopefully Parallels can get an update out ASAP to fix it.

Hope this helps.

Forum post in question: http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?287956-Can-t-start-Windows-8-VM-on-latest-MacBook-Air
Click to expand...

I actually had exactly the same issues, couldn't boot at all with Parallels on my bootcamp partition so I gave up! I've also noticed the WEI in Windows 8 fails when it tries to do the HDD (SSD) benchmark - I know Windows doesn't yet support PCIe SSDs OTB (much like SATA for XP) so it's possible this might be a Windows fix, not a Parallels one?
 
mattferg said:
I actually had exactly the same issues, couldn't boot at all with Parallels on my bootcamp partition so I gave up! I've also noticed the WEI in Windows 8 fails when it tries to do the HDD (SSD) benchmark - I know Windows doesn't yet support PCIe SSDs OTB (much like SATA for XP) so it's possible this might be a Windows fix, not a Parallels one?
Click to expand...
Maybe, although that Win8 is booting fine through BootCamp suggests that the Apple driver is sufficient for this, and the driver itself simply didn't account for other internal Windows testing/diagnostic processes. I'm banking on a Parallels fix since the issue seems to be, on my end, that it's coded to boot only from a (non-existant) SATA drive - I'm not even getting to the Win8 splash screen or seeing any indication that Windows is attempting to load through Parallels. Rather, it seems like the "hardware" on which the Win8 installation is contained is not being found and accounted for by Parallels.

One thing I will bet on though is that Parallels will have to figure this out for the forthcoming Retina MBP updates as well, so we're just an early test case.
 
Parallels works fine with a Windows8 virtual machine, however I do not use Bootcamp. Never saw the need for it.
 
TC25 said:
Parallels works fine with a Windows8 virtual machine, however I do not use Bootcamp. Never saw the need for it.
Click to expand...

If you ever need to run anything graphically intensive, say a CAD platform, you're better off rebooting into Windows than trying to run it through parallels.
 
jadam said:
If you ever need to run anything graphically intensive, say a CAD platform, you're better off rebooting into Windows than trying to run it through parallels.
Click to expand...

I'll keep this in mind if I ever have a need to run a CAD program.
 
Work-around available

If you go to the Parallels thread linked on the first append of this thread, you'll see a work-around described. Basically, you need to create a virtual boot disk using the Windows utilities. Waste's some of your disk space, but other than that, it's a nice fix, but takes a bit of work to do. I'm guessing Parallels will have a proper fix by the time the next Macbooks come out since it's said Apple will use the same PCIe memory that the new Macairs are using.
 
Thread Bump - Anyone else on MR having trouble with this? Parallels is taking their sweet time actually fixing it versus forcing everyone to do a workaround.

Also, they've stopped responding to the thread on the Parallels forums related to this - has their service always been this terrible? This may be the first and last time I ever use one of their products.
 
When I run it, I get: "Can't do inplace edit: /Users/me/Documents/Parallels/My Boot Camp.pvm is not a regular file, <> line 130."
 
Also, Parallels has a solution for the Virtual Machine file itself, but it's apparently something that the front line technical support folks can't do. So, after spending 25 minutes with a front line person showing them exactly what the issue was and getting idiotic questions, they finally transferred me to a level 2 technician who solved it in like 5 minutes.
 
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