Solution to Error 1327: Invalid Drive

I was migrating a Parallels virtual machine to VMWare Fusion. After importing the VM and starting it, I tried to install VMWare Tools but repeatedly got the message Error 1327: Invalid Drive Z.

It turns out that as part of its OS X integration Parallels writes entries to the registry.

The solution was to type regedit at the Windows command line and use it to remove any entries at

HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Explorer/User Shell Folders

that began with Z:. After that, everything was happy.

Comments

I had a similar problem, but I had to change the same key at HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT instead of HKEY_CURRENT_USER.

YAY It worked for me too! Thanks so much for this!

I am trying to install programs on XP through my parallels VM running on OS X. I get a 1327 error sometimes (usually with programs associated with my school software that work on other machines). It is referring to drive E:\. I looked in both registry folders listed on this forum and found no drive entries of any kind. Any ideas??

Well, I don't know if I missed it or if it only shows up when I "Boot" to Windows (using only boot camp, not Parallels), but I found the entry and deleted it and so far so good. Genius I say, genius. What would I do w/o people like you.

Also, I find it somewhat unlikely that I missed it in my first search when I had windows running inside Parallels. Any thoughts on registry settings being inconsistent and depending on boot type? Doesn't make sense to me.