This is something I searched high and low for after making the mistake of trying to run a virtual machine from a networked drive: once I had added that machine (which doesn't work because of limitations imposed by the design of Parallels - at the time of this writing), I couldn't remove it from the list of virtual machines (guest machines, whatever you want to call it). This presented a huge problem because I had done this on my MacBook Pro, which is a mobile machine and doesn't always have access to the network shares. To further exacerbate the problem, if Parallels could not find the shared folder where the machines were supposed to be loaded, it would eventually slow my MacBook to a crawl until the OS simply locked up. The solution is simple, yet only documented in one place, and not one of the directories removed when you uninstall Parallels. Delete the directory ~/Documents/.parallels-vm-directory (or, 'rm -r /Users/yourusername/Documents/.parallels-vm-directory'). Once this directory is removed, your machine list - aka the list that shows the virtual machines you have installed on your computer - you will lose the list you had (I'm assuming you'll be able to find where you installed your virtual machines on your own), but Parallels will again work as it should when away from those networked volumes.
I can't believe this isn't well documented since it causes a great deal of harm on a system where someone has tried to run a virtual machine from a networked drive. It is the only reason why I am beta testing VMWare Fusion.
Technorati Tags: parallels
