How to reset Spotlight cache/index?
Solution 1:
Usually it's not necessary to rebuild the Spotlight database to get rid of Windows applications of a deleted Windows VM in the Spotlight results.
To properly remove all traces of a deleted Windows VM with some kind of integration in macOS - like a VM specific Application menu - remove the links of the Windows apps in $HOME/Library/Parallels/Application Menus/ and/or $HOME/Applications (Parallels)/.
To remove Parallels Desktop completely from your Mac remove the following files and folders besides the main app in /Applications:
- $HOME/Library/Preferences/com.parallels.*
- $HOME/Library/Parallels
- $HOME/Applications (Parallels)/
- $HOME/Documents/Virtual Machines (or something similar - please check that it doesn't contain VMs of other type2 hypervisors like VMware)
- /usr/local/bin/prl* (possible soft links to Parallels command line tools in the app bundle)
Solution 2:
To see where an item in Spotlight is located, press ⌘↩︎ (cmd-return) to reveal the item in Finder. That error isn't something I'd expect if the item had actually been removed.
You can reindex your disk by adding the disk to System Preferences → Spotlight → Privacy (which will delete the index), then removing it from the list.
- https://support.apple.com/kb/HT201716