Unable to start the Windows virtual machine: Operation Time Out. Problem ID: 15.

Symptoms

I cannot start the Windows Virtual Machine due to the error message "Operation Time Out. Problem ID: 15".

Cause

The Mac has been hard rebooted when Windows virtual machine was started (power outage).

Resolution

We strongly recommend you to make a backup copy of the virtual machine before going any further:

How to backup my virtual machine?

When the virtual machine has been backed up, proceed with the instructions below:

1. Restart the Mac.

   If restarting the Mac does not help, please do the following:

2. Make sure the virtual machine is in shutdown state.

3. Locate your virtual machine in Control Center > right click on the .pvm bundle > choose Show Package Contents.

4. Launch Terminal application on the Mac.

5. In the appeared Terminal window type in the command below:

   prl_disk_tool check --hdd 
   

6. Drag-and-drop the file with .hdd format with the name of your virtual machine and hit Return.

   Example:

   prl_disk_tool check --hdd /Users/<user_name>/Documents/Parallels/Windows\ 7.pvm/Windows\ 7\ 0.hdd
   
   Operation progress 83 %
   

7. Wait for the operation to complete.

8. Start the virtual machine.

If Windows machine still does not start it may have got uploaded to iCloud or any other cloud storage service.

Transfer it back to the Mac hard drive using the steps below:

1. Find Windows machine on the computer.
    
2. Right click on .pvm bundle > select Get Info.
    
3. Check General info > Where > it should look like this:
   
   Macintosh HD/Users/'your username'/Parallels
    
4. If it starts with iCloud, exclude it from the backup and move it back to the Mac.