Disclaimer: This is a personal document and is not official or endorsed by VMware. Feedback and suggestions are welcome.
This document is intended to address common questions not already covered by various other sources, such as the official Fusion FAQ, the latest release notes and documentation, or anything else in the Fusion forum documents category. It may also answer questions in more depth than is appropriate for a normal forum post. The document assumes familiarity with common terms such as guest or host; see A Beginner's Guide to VMware Fusion for an explanation. For guest-specific questions, see Frequently Asked Questions about Guest OSes.
If you want to be notified of changes and additions to this document, you can use the "Receive email notifications" action in the sidebar on the left. Please use the comments below only for things specific to this document; general questions are better off in the discussion section.
Quick Answers
Postflight script failed
When upgrading Fusion, in some cases the networking kernel extensions don't get unloaded properly. The easiest way to work around the problem is to reboot OS X.
Failed to connect to peer process
This indicates that some kernel extensions were not correctly loaded. One common cause is that an installation was incomplete (sometimes kexts don't unload properly). The following steps should solve this problem:
- Reboot the Mac. This should make sure that kexts aren't stuck.
- Uninstall Fusion using /Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/Uninstall VMware Fusion.app (this won't affect your virtual machines). This should make sure that problematic kexts are gone.
- Reboot the Mac. This should make really sure they're gone
- Install Fusion
VMware Fusion cannot connect to the virtual machine. Make sure you have rights to run the program and access all directories it uses and rights to access all directories for temporary files.
This indicates one of two problems.
The first is a permissions problem. The following steps should solve this problem:
- Uninstall Fusion (this won't affect your virtual machines)
- Reboot the Mac
- Repair disk permissions using Disk Utility
- Install Fusion
If you're technically inclined, one likely problem is that some of our helper programs in /Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion must have the setuid bit set. These include vmware-authd, vmware-rawdiskCreator, vmware-vmx, vmware-vmx-debug, and VMDKMounter.app/Contents/MacOS/vmware-vmdkMounter. If you copied your installation from another Mac or used image deployment software incorrectly, these permissions might have been lost.
The second is if our kernel extensions (kexts) did not properly load. You can check if they are by running the following command in a terminal:
kextstat | grep vmware
There should be four kexts loaded. If not, please start a thread, mention the error and other information from HOWTO: Ask (and Answer) Questions, and include the support information generated by Fusion (Help > Collect Support Information).
Can't find CD/DVD a.k.a. What's this PXE thing?
If the BIOS is unable to find any bootable media, by default it will fall back to attempting to PXE boot (i.e. boot off the network). If possible, verify that your installation media is good (have you used it successfully before?). If you're using a physical CD/DVD to install from, it should disappear from the desktop when the virtual machine starts, which indicates that the virtual machine managed to get ownership of the drive.
Ctrl-click
Ctrl-click is a Mac shortcut for right click, and many users expect it to work that way. However, some guest applications may actually want to receive ctrl-click events. To disable this mapping, look under Fusion's Preferences and uncheck the Mac OS mouse shortcuts option.
If you still need right-click, you can get this on Mac laptops by enabling two-finger clicks, under System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse > Trackpad > "Place two fingers..."
Boot Camp virtual machine has a Blue Screen of Death with error code 0x0000007b
See Re: Bluescreen trying to run Fusion 1.1.2 from Boot Camp partition on MacBook Air
Bluetooth stops working when Fusion runs
Apple's Bluetooth adapter is a USB device. As explained in Virtual Hardware later in this document, USB devices can only be controlled by one OS at a time. You've probably (accidentally) told Fusion to automatically connect the Bluetooth adapter to the virtual machine, which will cause OS X to lose track of it. The solution is to disconnect the Bluetooth adapter from the virtual machine (e.g. Virtual Machine > USB). If your mouse is Bluetooth, the easiest way to do this is to borrow a USB mouse.
USB sound devices connected directly to the guest produce garbled output on Snow Leopard hosts
This is an Apple bug in the full-speed isochronous USB support (WriteIsochPipeAsync) in 10.6. It impacts Fusion, Parallels, and VirtualBox alike. Apple is aware of the issue and is working on it.
Workaround: Keep the USB audio device connected to your Mac, and set it as the default audio output/input device in Mac OS X's System Preferences.
Function keys
By default, many Mac keyboards (laptop keyboards, the thin aluminum keyboard) have what appear to be "function keys" but are actually special media keys (sound, brightness, etc.). You can get normal function key behavior by pressing fn-F# (or in System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse > Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys).
Other things to try are unchecking "Enable Mac OS keyboard shortcuts" in Fusion's Preferences and/or checking that other shortcuts (such as Spaces) don't conflict.
Number lock
On full Mac keyboards, try the "clear" button above numberpad 7. On laptop keypads, try numlck/F6 (you may also have to enable this elsewhere in the guest; for example in Window's on-screen keyboard).
Keyboard layout in the guest doesn't match the host
http://www.harbar.net/archive/2008/06/30/Apple-Keyboard-Layout-for-Virtual-Machines.aspx has a nice explanation and instructions to fix.
Force Quitting
As A Beginner's Guide to VMware Fusion notes, Fusion uses a frontend GUI process and a backend vmware-vmx process. If you force quit Fusion, you're only killing the GUI process; the vmware-vmx process continues to run. If you want to stop Fusion, you need to kill vmware-vmx as well.
If Fusion is still responding but the guest has crashed or become unusable, a better choice is to tell Fusion to stop or restart the virtual machine. Select the Virtual Machine menu and hold the option key - "Shut Down Guest" should change to "Shut Down", and "Restart Guest" should change to "Reset" (note: for certain virtual machine configurations, this may be reversed).
Upgrading or updating Fusion
Installing new version over an old version should work; another option is to uninstall the old version first. It shouldn't matter. You usually shouldn't have to restart afterwards, though it can't hurt - if you have network problems after updating, this would be a good thing to try.
You should avoid having a virtual machine suspended when you update Fusion - while it usually works, it's safer to shut down virtual machines before updating Fusion.
Firewire
It is not possible to use Firewire devices in a guest as Firewire devices, our virtual hardware doesn't support it. Depending on the device, though, you may be able to access it in other ways - for example, if it's a Firewire hard drive, you could use a shared folder (or for advanced users, a raw disk map). If it's an optical drive, you could use it as a physical drive.
See also FireWire and VMware Fusion FAQ
When is the next release coming out?
VMware policy is to not comment on unannounced things such as timelines, so we're not allowed to say. Although every product and release cycle is different, here is some historical information you might find interesting about public Fusion releases (Note: private beta are not listed):
| Date | Version | Notable changes |
|---|---|---|
| Dec 22, 2006 | Public Beta | Already had 64-bit guest support, USB 2, and multiple virtual CPUs. There was a private beta before this. |
| Mar 1, 2007 | Beta 2 | Experimental DirectX 8.1 support. Single snapshot. Vista as a normal guest. |
| Apr 5, 2007 | Beta 3 | Boot Camp support. Easy Install. Newly created virtual machines are bundles instead of folders. |
| Jun 7, 2007 | Beta 4 | Unity. Customizable toolbar. |
| Jun 21, 2007 | Beta 4.1 | Refresh to have experimental support for Leopard as a host, fix USB bug in 10.4.10 and Santa Rosa MBPs. |
| Jul 3, 2007 | Release Candidate 1 | Minor changes, ability to optimize for guest disk or host application performance. |
| Aug 6, 2007 | 1.0 | Whew! |
| Sep 27, 2007 | 1.1 Beta 1 | Experimental DirectX 9.0 support. iPhone fix. |
| Oct 25, 2007 | 1.1 Release Candidate 1 | Leopard compatibility improvements (GA of Leopard is Oct 26, we don't have it yet). Vista in Boot Camp. |
| Nov 12, 2007 | 1.1 | Localization in French, German, and Japanese (this may have been in 1.1b1 or 1.1rc1). Leopard compatibility. Importer Beta 1 was also released at the same time. |
| Jan 29, 2008 | 1.1.1 | (optional) key combo (cmd-z/c/v/p/a/f to ctrl-z/c/v/p/a/f) remapping in all modes, not just Unity. |
| Apr 23, 2008 | 1.1.2 | Localization in Simplified Chinese. MacBook Air Superdrive fix. |
| May 5, 2008 | 2.0 Beta 1 | Multiple monitors. Experimental DirectX 9.0 with shaders. Easier printer sharing. Redesigned UI. Integrated Importer. |
| May 30, 2008 | 1.1.3 | Boot Camp Vista SP1 support. Fixed prebuilt HGFS modules for Linux guests. |
| July 30, 2008 | 2.0 Beta 2 | Multiple snapshots, AutoProtect. Cross-platform file associations. Linux Unity, Linux Easy Install (select distros only). Leopard Server guest. Improved DirectX support. Customizable key remapping. 4 vCPUs. vmrun. |
| August 29, 2008 | 2.0 Release Candidate | Bundled antivirus. Localization in Italian and Spanish. Various stabilization fixes. |
| September 15, 2008 | 2.0 | Whew! |
| November 14, 2008 | 2.0.1 | Performance fixes, nested shared folder fix, numerous other minor fixes. |
| February 11, 2009 | 2.0.2 | Import Parallels Desktop 4 virtual machines, Ubuntu 8.10 support, fix a number of Tools-related problems, numerous other minor fixes. |
| April 2, 2009 | 2.0.3 | Printing passthrough fix for breakage caused by Apple Security Update 2009-001. Snow Leopard guest (experimental) support improved. |
| April 10, 2009 | 2.0.4 | Security fix for CVE-2009-1244, no other changes |
| June 23, 2009 | 2.0.5 | Ubuntu 9.04 support, experimental Snow Leopard host and guest support (32-bit only) |
| October 1, 2009 | 2.0.6 | Snow Leopard 32-bit host support, security fixes for CVE-2009-3281 and CVE-2009-3282 |
| October 27, 2009 | 3.0 | Whew! There were a few private betas before this. |
| March 12, 2010 | 3.1 Beta 1 | Performance and 3D improvements, Boot Camp disk identification. |
| April 8, 2010 | 2.0.7 | Security fixes, allow use of 3.x license keys |
| May 25, 2010 | 3.1 | Improved 3D performance, Boot Camp disk performance, OpenGL 2.1 support for Win Vista/7 |
| August 13, 2010 | 3.1.1 | Fix vmware-vdiskmanager regression, audio recording fix |
| December 2, 2010 | 2.0.8 | Security fix |
| December 2, 2010 | 3.1.2 | Security fixes, various other fixes |
| May 31, 2011 | 3.1.3 | Window 7 SP1 support, Ubuntu 10.10 and 11.04 support, improved graphics and HGFS stability |
| Sept 14, 2011 | 4.0 | Lion support, encrypted virtual machines, pause, timeline-based snapshot view. Requires 64-bit CPU. |
| Sept 14, 2011 | 4.0.1 | Disk buffering fix |
| Sept 27, 2011 | 4.0.2 | Lion compatability fix |
| Nov 17, 2011 | 4.1 | Lion-style full screen option, fullscreen menubar changes, performance and 3D improvements |
| Nov 23, 2011 | 4.1.1 | Minor fixes |
| April 12, 2012 | 4.1.2 | Minor fixes, security fixes |
| April 13, 2012 | 3.1.4 | Fix an issue starting virtual machines on 10.7.4 |
| June 13, 2012 | 4.1.3 | Security fixes, minor other fixes |
| Aug 23, 2012 | 5.0 | Mountain Lion support, Windows 8 support, USB 3 support. 3D acceleration for some recent Linux guests. Fusion Professional edition. |
| ??? | ??? | ??? (cannot check it anymore) |
| Sept 3, 2013 | 6.0.0 | HW version 10, up to 16 cores and 64 GB, allow promiscuous mode without prompt, run VM in background without a window, Support Windows 8.1, Mac OS 10.9 |
| Sept 9,2013 | 6.0.1 | |
| Nov 5, 2013 | 6.0.2 | |
| Apr 17, 2014 | 6.0.3 | |
| Jul 1, 2014 | 6.0.4 | |
| Sept 2, 2014 | 7.0.0 | HW version 11, Yosemite support, multiple GPU support, connect to vSphere |
| Oct 10, 2014 | 6.0.5 | Yosemite support |
| Oct 28, 2014 | 7.0.1 | |
| Dec 1, 2014 | 7.1.0 | |
| Feb 17, 2015 | 7.1.1 | |
| April 23, 2015 | 6.0.6 | OpenSSL patch, OS X 10.10 host fix |
| June 15, 2015 | 7.1.2 | OpenSSL patch, Windows 10 crash fix |
| August 24, 2015 | 8.0.0 | HW version 12, DirectX 10, OpenGL 3.3, Windows 10, OS X El Capitan, USB3 for Windows 7, create VMs on vSphere |
| Sept 29, 2015 | 8.0.1 | Fix for El Capitan VM creation |
| October 29, 2015 | 8.0.2 | Maintenance release |
| November 12, 2015 | 7.1.3 | Fix VMware Tools crash on Windows XP SP2, clipboard fixes, fix HGFS kernel crash on newer linux kernels |
| December 8, 2015 | 8.1.0 | Maintenance release, Windows 10, 1511 guest OS support |
| April 21, 2016 | 8.1.1 | |
| September 13, 2016 | 8.5.0 | macOS Sierra support, Windows 10 Anniversary, Windows 2016 guest support, |
| October 27, 2016 | 8.5.1 | |
| November 13, 2016 | 8.5.2 | security update |
| November 29, 2016 | 8.5.3 | |
| March 9, 2017 | 8.5.4 | fix vmrun guest operations inside mac guest, fix shared folders in RHEL 7.3, fix vmnat and ftp, fix thinprint on Win XP |
| March 14, 2017 | 8.5.5 | Security issue on Drag and drop ( CVE-2017-4901 ) |
| March 28, 2017 | 8.5.6 | Security issues (CVE-2017-4902, CVE-2017-4903, CVE-2017-4904, CVE-2017-4905) and fix VMware Tools access violation error |
| May 18, 2017 | 8.5.7 | Windows 10 Creators Update fix, fix GIT clone with NAT networking |
| June 22, 2017 | 8.5.8 | macOS High Sierra APFS experimental support, macOS High Sierra beta installer |
The timeline may be off by a few days - I don't have official sources at hand so am going by what the internet tells me. Past performance is no guarantee of future returns.
If we're in the middle of a beta cycle, you can get some idea of the next update by checking when the current beta expires. There should be an update before then.
Detailed Answers
High CPU Usage
Description
A virtual machine that's not doing anything consumes an abnormally high amount of CPU (exact numbers depend on the guest, but most should idle at below 10%, usually around 5%).
There are many possible causes, this section will point out some known issues.
Explanation
Is the guest really idle?
Even though you might not be doing anything in the guest, this doesn't mean the guest is idle. For example, some OSes automatically index the contents of the hard disk. There might be a runaway process in the guest, or you may have forgotten about that helper program you installed months ago.
You can check whether the guest is really idle by using guest-specific tools (e.g. Task Manager in Windows, top in Linux, etc.)
This is the only cause which should provoke 100% CPU usage, all the others produce elevated CPU usage but would not individually go all the way to 100%.
Host CPU throttling
On laptops, depending on your power settings, OS X might throttle the CPU speed. The CPU usage reported by Activity Monitor doesn't adjust for this (or does, depending on your point of view), so for example 24% of a core that is throttled 6x slower would be the same as 4% of an unthrottled core.
You can check this by doing something that causes the CPU to run at full speed (for example, run while true; do true; done in a Terminal window, use ctrl-C to break it when you're finished). If the CPU usage of the guest drops, this was the issue. As long as the laptop isn't actually running hotter, host CPU throttling isn't a problem.
Guest timer interrupts
Especially in Fusion 1.x, it is more expensive to take an interrupt in a guest than it is in native hardware. Some programs, such as QuickTime and iTunes, can raise the timer interrupt rate. Some guests, especially certain Linux distros, have a high (1 kHz as opposed to 100 Hz) timer interrupt rate compiled in to the kernel.
Devices
Having USB devices connected to the virtual machine can cause additional CPU usage, even if they're not doing anything. USB is a host-driven protocol; in physical machines, the USB controller must periodically poll all devices to see if they have any new data. In a virtual machine, the CPU has to do this work.
Multiple virtual processors
There is overhead in synchronizing virtual CPUs, since we have to wait for the host to schedule us properly, for a slightly more detailed explanation see Choosing the Right Virtual Machine Settings. As a wild guess, I would expect an idle vSMP guest to use perhaps 30% more CPU than an idle single vCPU guest.
Unity
In Unity mode, Fusion must do additional work to keep track of each guest window and see whether they have moved, changed size, etc.
Full vs Light versions
Description
When you download Fusion 2 or 3, there are two choices: full and light. What's the difference, and which do you want?
Explanation
In Fusion 2, the difference was that the full version came with McAfee VirusScan Plus, while the light version did not.
In Fusion 3, the difference is what packages are installed by default. If you do something which requires a package you don't have, Fusion will ask and then download the required package, so you don't lose any functionality by using the light version.
| Full | Light | |
| Windows (2k and later) Tools | :smileyplus: | :smileyplus: |
| Mac OS X Tools | :smileyplus: | :smileyplus: |
| MacFUSE* | :smileyplus: | :smileyplus: |
| VMware OVFTool** | :smileyplus: | :smileyminus: |
| McAfee VirusScan Plus | :smileyplus: | :smileyminus: |
| Linux Tools | :smileyplus: | :smileyminus: |
| Windows (9x) Tools | :smileyplus: | :smileyminus: |
| Solaris Tools | :smileyplus: | :smileyminus: |
| Netware Tools | :smileyplus: | :smileyminus: |
| FreeBSD Tools | :smileyplus: | :smileyminus: |
* Not a default install on 10.6 due to a bug which can cause the installer to spin forever; you can choose to select it anyway though.
** Not a default install due to size and the expectation that only serious power users will be interested in it. Unlike other packages, this is not integrated in the UI and cannot be downloaded on demand.
IMHO, the only reason to use the full installer is if you'll need the other packages and won't have internet (or a few other corner case scenarios). For the majority of users, the light version is better.
Color Printing
Description
You can print in color from OS X, but printing from the guest is only in grayscale. You are printing using Fusion's printing passthrough, a.k.a. driverless printing, a.k.a. ThinPrint.
Explanation
In order for the guest to know what it can print (in terms of capabilities, such as color, page size, and so on), it must learn this from Fusion (or to be more specific, ThinPrint). This information comes from ppd files that come with OS X, which outline what each printer can do. However, some ppd files incorrectly say that a printer cannot print in color - therefore the guest restricts itself to grayscale.
The solution is to edit the ppd file to correctly claim color printing capability. See for example Fusion 2.0 - Thinprint drivers and color printing.
Sound
Description
In some cases sound does not work.
A related problem is the built-in microphone not working.
An unrelated problem is sound being delayed or garbled.
An unrelated problem is that old guests which use a SoundBlaster16 card don't have audio in Fusion. This is (unfortunately) expected behavior. Unlike our other products, Fusion doesn't support SB16 as noted in the release notes.
Explanation
There are a few known causes, and you need to check each one.
If you used Converter to convert a virtual machine, the virtual sound device might have been configured in a way that Fusion doesn't understand. The simplest way to solve this is (with the virtual machine shut down) to go to Virtual Machine > Settings > Sound and select Remove Sound Device, then Add Sound Device. This should clear out the settings.
If you're using 32-bit Vista and have not updated, you need to run Windows Update to get the sound driver as noted in the release notes.
Make sure the guest sees the sound device and it's not showing errors (e.g. misconfigured driver).
Try disabling any audio filters that may have been installed on the host. We've seen some (such as an older version of SRS iWow or Digidesign CoreAudio) which will cause audio to not work. Check /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/ and /Users/${USER}/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/, as well as anywhere else audio plugins may have gotten installed. There are probably some which we aren't aware of that cause this problem - if you find one where disabling it fixes the sound, please let us know.
Disk Space
Description
The on-disk space (i.e. the space that OS X sees as used) doesn't always match what the guest thinks the size of the disk is. On-disk space may exceed the maximum size of the virtual disk, and is frequently less.
A related question is why deleting a file in the virtual machine does not reduce the on-disk size.
A related question is why deleting a virtual machine does not free as much space as the maximum size of the virtual disk.
Explanation
A virtual disk is only one part of a virtual machine, although it's usually the largest. The notable exception is a snapshot - a snapshot can potentially expand the required on-disk size by as much as the maximum size of all virtual disks in the virtual machine. As a thought experiment, consider what happens if you fill up your virtual disk, take a snapshot, then fill up the virtual disk with completely new data. Since a snapshot should let you revert to the state at the time of the snapshot, in this situation we could need to use (at least) twice the maximum capacity of the disk on the host. Remember that snapshots can increase the size of a virtual machine beyond the maximum disk size you chose when setting up the VM
.
The default disk settings are set to use sparse disks. As A Beginner's Guide to VMware Fusion explains, sparse disks start out small and grow as needed, but an important thing to be aware of is that virtual disks don't shrink automatically. The reason is because Fusion has a very low-level view of the world - it doesn't know what files are to the guest, just that a guest wants to write some data to a particular block. For efficiency, most (all?) filesystems not only store data (e.g. the contents of that document you've been working on) but also metadata (e.g. the name, path, date modified, size, and so on). When you delete a file, most of the time you're deleting the metadata, not the actual data - this is why a giant file doesn't take long to delete, and is key for how data recovery software works (they try to guess/reconstruct the metadata). However, from Fusion's point of view, it doesn't know what the data means, so deleting metadata doesn't look any different from writing a small amount of data - Fusion has no idea that the data the file referred to isn't important anymore.
Enter Tools and the shrink process. Tools can use the guest operating system to tell what's actually a file (and thus contains valuable data) vs. what's wasted space (and can thus be gotten rid of and save space). Remember that the shrink process is necessary to free up unused space, and that it cannot be used if you have a snapshot or are using a preallocated disk.
Sparse disks confuse some people - if they tell Fusion to use 20 GB for a guest, then delete it and only recover 5 GB of space, some people get confused and wonder what happened to the other 15 GB. The answer is simple - Fusion never used that space in the first place, because sparse disks grow as needed.
If you use a sparse disk, one thing to watch out for is any program which constantly reads and writes data to the virtual disk - for example, defragmenters. These programs can cause the virtual disk to constantly grow (remember how it doesn't shrink automatically?), even though you're not actually doing anything. Either periodically shrink the disk (this doesn't work if you have a snapshot), avoid such programs, or accept that the virtual disk will grow (and perhaps use a preallocated disk, since at least then the size will be constant and you won't be surprised).
Virtual Hardware
Description
Virtual machines see a very different set of virtual hardware than is actually on the host. The most commonly asked-about one is the video card; other examples include (but are not limited to) the network card, keyboard/mouse, drives, and more.
A related question is why a device (such as an optical drive or a USB device) can only be used by one OS at a time.
A related question is why you can't dedicate a PCI cards to a guest.
Explanation
One of the key concepts of virtualization is resource control (along with equivalence and efficiency). In other words, a guest should not be able to affect things that the virtualization software does not allow it to affect. This was one of the major challenges to x86 virtualization - there are certain x86 instructions that cannot be easily handled, and was why VMware's Binary Translation technique was a big deal when it was new - it made x86 virtualization possible.
Many, if not all, devices assume they are controlled by exactly one OS - that is, whoever is talking to them is the one they should listen to. If two or more OSes were to give conflicting commands, devices would get confused, and then so would the OSes as they started to get unexpected errors. In these cases, we must either dedicate, or passthrough, the device to one OS, or emulate a similar device. Passthrough devices must be safe in the sense that anything a guest can do to a passed-though device must maintain the resource control criteria. As a concrete example, passthrough devices include USB devices, emulated devices include the default keyboard/mouse and sound.
Note that even Fusion goes through the host's drivers (again, only one OS controls the hardware, so that means everything funnels through the host drivers) - this means we're subject to any bugs or limitations of the host drivers.
Video cards are an example of a device which assumes it is controlled by exactly one OS. If a guest were to be able to access a graphics card directly, it could draw anywhere on screen it wanted, affect host textures, etc. Even a well-intentioned guest would cause problems, because it wouldn't be aware of what the host is doing ("Hey, what's this texture? I don't recognize it, must not be important!" and then your windows/icon/desktop/menus/etc. disappear). It's not possible to dedicate an entire graphics card to the guest either, since the underlying buses are also not safe to pass through - see for example Re: Guest able to directly access PCI cards for a good explanation. Even if you did this, the only Mac which could take advantage of this would be a Mac Pro with extra graphics cards.
Because of this, we take the emulation approach. The guest sees a VMware video card, and we do the work of converting guest commands into something that's safe and usable for the host video card. There's no point in installing drivers for the host video card in the guest (with the exception of Boot Camp virtual machines, where you might want to native boot) since the guest never gets to speak directly to the host video card.
One future possibility is the notion of virtualization-aware hardware, which does not make the assumption that it's only ever talking to one OS. Such hardware would have different contexts that the host can switch between for its own use or for guest use. Intel's Vanderpool and AMD's Pacifica are examples of virtualization-aware CPU technology. Other virtualization-aware hardware, such as for graphics, network, or storage, is theoretically possible but I don't think any currently exist, especially not for the consumer market. I'm am not sure when or even if they might become available.
Major Known Issues
vmdk files truncated at exactly 266240 bytes
Normally, even if you have to hard power off your Mac, your virtual disk files should be intact (though possibly inconsistent). However, if you have McAfee VirusScan 8.6.1 or McAfee Security 1.0 (other products or versions may also be affected) installed on the host, your vmdk files may be truncated at exactly 266240 bytes in some circumstances (such as when hard powering off your Mac). Truncations at other sizes may be the same issue, but the cases we've seen are at 266240.
This affects all versions of Fusion. We believe this is a bug in McAfee's kernel module com.mcafee.kext.Virex and have filed a bug with them about this.
As a workaround, exclude your virtual machines (or at least the .vmdk files) from being scanned. The exact instructions vary depending on what McAfee product you are using, but look under Preferences and either Anti-malware > Exclusions or More Options > Excluded File or Folder.
