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Boot Order Settings

In the Boot Order pane, you can view and configure the virtual machine boot sequence, that is, the order in which the virtual machine will try to load the operating system from different boot devices.

To open these settings, choose Actions > Configure > Hardware, then click Boot Order.

VM_Configuration_Boot Order

Option

Description

Boot order

Use this list to edit the boot order settings. The currently supported boot devices are listed below:

  • Hard Disk. Select this device if you want the virtual machine to boot up from its virtual hard disk drive.
  • CD/DVD-ROM. Select this device if you want the virtual machine to boot up from the media connected to its virtual CD/DVD-ROM drive.
  • External device. Select this device if you want the virtual machine to boot up from a bootable external device (USB, FireWire, Thunderbolt, etc.) connected to your Mac. Once selected, choose the device from the External boot device menu located below.
  • Floppy Disk. Select this device if you want the virtual machine to boot up from a floppy disk image connected to its virtual floppy disk drive.
  • Network. Select this device if you want your virtual machine to boot from a network adapter using PXE (Pre-Execution Environment).

Every time you start the virtual machine, it tries to boot from the device specified as the first one in the Boot order list. If the virtual machine cannot boot from the first device (for example, no media is connected to it), the virtual machine proceeds to the second device in the list and tries to boot from this device, and so on.

In this list, you can perform the following operations:

  • Change the currently set boot sequence by selecting the name of the corresponding boot device and moving it up or down using the arrows to the right of the list.
  • Remove a boot device from the sequence by clearing the check box next to its name.

External boot device

If you chose External device from the Boot order menu, use this menu to select the external boot device.

Select boot device on startup

If you choose this option, you will see the following message at the virtual machine startup: "Press ESC to select boot device". If you press ESC pending 5 seconds, you will be able to select a boot device. If you do not press ESC, the virtual machine will try to boot from the devices specified in the Boot order list.

Boot flags

The Boot flags field is intended for specifying the flags that can change the virtual machine system behavior. The system flags can be used by the Parallels customer support team in cases when something goes wrong in your virtual machine. It is not recommended to type anything into this field without being instructed to do so by the customer support staff.

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