The purpose of posting HOWTO: Ask (and Answer) Questions as a reply to a post that doesn't have enough information to provide specific answers without having to ask for the missing information is so we don't have to ask and you as the person requesting help should read the document and provide the information requested within the document so we don't have to waste time getting the information that one should be including in the first place.

If you don't what to that's fine it's your prerogative and your certainly free to uninstall the software and try and get your money back without asking for any additional help.

As to loosing 15 years of music masters, well that's your fault for not having proper backups! Which would mean multiple copies in multiple locations stored on appropriate media in the appropriate manner. That should be a no-brainer when dealing with digital information of that value!

No, what is needed is what was stated in the How to Ask document. Things like what version of OSX, what version of Fusion (or whatever VMWare product) what version of the application, such as iTunes, what OS and what service pack. Each version of everything has it's own bugs so the reason for asking is becaue your issue could be as simple as updating your software. Your way is like telling the doctor, "My stomach hurts. Why?" You need to tell the doctor more info so they can give a better diagnosis just as you need to supply more info here. Otherwise, good luck.

The information you gave in your first post is neither explicit or specific from a diagnostic or troubleshooting perspective and if you would bother to read HOWTO: Ask (and Answer) Questions it will tell you what information to include. Things like Host OS version, Fusion version, Guest OS version, description of error messages, etc, etc... and this is so someone can either give explicit and specific directions or ask explicit and specific questions based on exactly what it is you have and not just generalize questions and or answers.

Computers fail and it doesn't matter if they are physical or virtual however having a Virtual Machine has the advantage of after spending all those hours and days building it out the Virtual Machine Bundle Package can be backed up so one could restore a working Virtual Machine in a very little amount of time and most likely less then a half hour. That along with making proper data backups and restoring the data backups should give one the ability to have a fully functioning Virtual Machine complete with current data in a couple of hours at the most and if you aren't taking advantage of the technology available to do this then who's fault is it? Yours!

I guess this is just to much for an "alabama redneck" to comprehend!

This specific situation may be a case of "too little too late", but I had a similar problem happen to me a few days ago.

Got a great answer that led to a resolution, and if anyone's interested, the post at Connecting external NTFS hard drive in XP guest OS contains a description of the problem and the solution.

Best regards to others who may run across this problem in the future.

Yes, just move the entire package file (or folder) to your external drive. When you next start the virtual machine, you will be prompted if you copied or moved the virtual machine. Select "moved".

While you can use a USB hard drive, for storing virtual machines, a fast Firewire drive would be preferrable.