I have a Parallels VM of Windows 7 which I use occasionally to do some Windows-specific stuff.

Today when I launched the machine, it stuck in an endless loop of "Windows is loading files..." followed by a restart of the VM, followed by "Windows is loading files..."

No problem. I'll just restore an earlier version.

I've tried this several times, going back more than a month with the same results on restore. I'm pretty sure I'm doing it the right way, but wanted to check:

1. Drag bottom shade up to date you want to restore from
2. Select item to restore
3. Click "Restore"

In this image, I assume I'm restoring "Windows 7.pvm" from January 12. Right?

David,

You're doing it right.

As a test, I started up a Parallels VM, created a file in the VM, shut it down, restored from an earlier version, and started it up again. The guest OS booted up just fine, and the file was gone.

If you want to verify that the recall is happening correctly, open the VM package and check the dates/sizes. In the Finder, select the VM package, right/control+click on it, and choose the Show Package Contents command. Perform the Restore/Recall and check the dates and sizes of the restored items to make sure they are what you expect.

I will note that there are pitfalls associated with trying to capture VM packages while the virtual machine is running/paused. Like databases, the VM software may have information caches in memory that doesn't get captured, so the recalled VM package is incomplete. I suspect, however, that this is not the case here.

If everything looks correct, then my guess is that there's some other issue related to your virtualization software.

As it turns out, the problem was that Intel Virtualization Technology had somehow become turned off in the BIOS. Once I turned that back on, everything was OK.