I have been using Windows XP Professional through a Boot Camp partition on MacBook Pro for many years. My MacBook died, so I bought a MacBook Air. My old hard drive was fine, and I can hook it up through the USB port and run the existing Boot Camp partition through Fusion 6 with no problems at all. It works perfectly. However, I don't want to have to carry around my old hard drive forever. So, I have tried to import the Boot Camp partition as a VM, as per the instructions in Fusion 6. This process seems to go well, and the VM is created. However, when I then go to start up the VM, I get a black screen with this message:
"Windows could not start because of a computer disk configuration problem.
Could not read from the selected boot disk. Check boot path and disk hardware.
Please check the Windows documentation about hardware disk configuration and your hardware reference manuals for additional information."
I have seen in Microsoft KB article 314477 that this problem is often related to partition assignment error in the BOOT.INI file. However, I can see no way to edit this file without putting my ability to boot from the external drive at risk.
I should also mention that I have created a new (empty) VM using the Windows XP Professional install CD which boots up just fine, so this is not a problem with Fusion or Windows per se. Also, once I get that error message, I can hit Fn-F8 and get the advanced Windows startup screen (the one with Safe Mode options, etc), but no matter what I try, I always end up back at the same error message. I have also tried booting the VM from the Windows startup disk, and I get the blue "Windows Setup" screen and it goes through a bunch of stuff, and then I end up with the same error message.
Any suggestions? I have spoken to a Microsoft technical person (via the Answers Desk) and they had no clue. To go deeper with them would cost me $259, and frankly I'd rather die than give those fine folks one more dollar. I have also spoken to a VMware tech support guy, and he had no clue. Surely I can't be the only person who has ever encountered this problem!