Troubleshoot Windows starting with error message "A critical error has occurred while reading/writing to Hard Disk 0..."

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When starting a Parallels Desktop virtual machine on your Mac, you may encounter a critical error message that indicates a possible issue with your Mac's hard drive.

A critical error has occurred while reading/writing to Hard Disk 0...

The reason if this message is because the virtual machine is located on a corrupted sectors of Mac's hard drive.

You can follow the steps below to try and resolve the issue and restore access to your virtual machine.

1. Run First Aid

Running First Aid can help troubleshoot any disk errors on your Mac. To run First Aid, follow the steps below:

  1. Open Disk Utility from the Applications/Utilities folder.
  2. Select your Mac's internal drive and click on First Aid.
  3. As soon as First Aid starts, click on the arrow next to 'Show Details' to expand the log field and look for any error reports in that log. You may see some indication of disk error in the log field even if First Aid completes successfully, in which case you can refer the customer to Apple support to troubleshoot disk errors on the Mac. If the reports in the log field looks normal, proceed to the next step.

2. Move virtual machine to external drive. If running First Aid does not resolve the issue, you can try moving your virtual machine to an external drive and running it from there. 

3. However, the most reliable solution in such a case would be to contact Apple support in order to replace the hard drive of the Mac.

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