Fusion 3 Boot Camp volume cannot be found...

[hoss713]

I installed VMware Fusion 3 on a Mac Pro (running Snow Leopard) and set it up to use my existing Boot Camp partition (Windows XP).

Everything installs and runs fine until I reboot the Mac Pro.

After the reboot, VMware shows an error in the Virtual Machine Library for the Boot Camp partition with the detailed error:

"The Boot Camp volume cannot be found.

If this volume is no longer required, you may safely delete

the entry from the library."

I've deleted this entry and gone through the setup to run windows from my Boot Camp partition several times, always with the same problem.

Anybody else seeing this problem? Any ideas on how to fix?

I was really hoping to switch from Parallels Desktop, but this would be a show-stopper for me...

Thanks...

lj

Message was edited by: hoss713

[Ixokai]

This is happening to me too, with a newly installed Windows 7 Professional (64-Bit) boot camp partition. I was in Win7 for awhile, came back to Snow Leopard and downloaded Fusion3 to give it a try for about a day. Everything worked just fine.

Then I rebooted into Win7 this morning to do some stuff, and when back on the SL side of things... suddenly Fusion3 can't find my partition anymore.

And I just bought the product after the initial testing, too. Hope it wasn't wasted money.

In Console, I have the following error messages related to VMWare, but I have no idea what they're indicating-- obviously the NTFS partition is fine as I can run Windows and all.

Nov 1 13:28:36 Top .com.vmware.fusion[550]: NTFS signature is missing.

Nov 1 13:28:36 Top .com.vmware.fusion[550]: Failed to startup volume: Invalid argument

Nov 1 13:29:02 Top .com.vmware.fusionDaemon[577]: /Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/VMware Fusion Helper.app/Contents/MacOS/VMware Fusion Helper: illegal option -- p

Nov 1 13:29:02 Top .com.vmware.fusionDaemon[577]: /Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/VMware Fusion Helper.app/Contents/MacOS/VMware Fusion Helper: illegal option -- s

Nov 1 13:29:02 Top .com.vmware.fusionDaemon[577]: /Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/VMware Fusion Helper.app/Contents/MacOS/VMware Fusion Helper: illegal option -- n

Nov 1 13:29:02 Top .com.vmware.fusionDaemon[577]: /Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/VMware Fusion Helper.app/Contents/MacOS/VMware Fusion Helper: illegal option -- _

Nov 1 13:29:02 Top .com.vmware.fusionDaemon[577]: /Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/VMware Fusion Helper.app/Contents/MacOS/VMware Fusion Helper: illegal option -- 0

Nov 1 13:29:02 Top .com.vmware.fusionDaemon[577]: /Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/VMware Fusion Helper.app/Contents/MacOS/VMware Fusion Helper: illegal option -- _

Nov 1 13:29:02 Top .com.vmware.fusionDaemon[577]: /Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/VMware Fusion Helper.app/Contents/MacOS/VMware Fusion Helper: illegal option -- 3

Nov 1 13:29:02 Top .com.vmware.fusionDaemon[577]: /Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/VMware Fusion Helper.app/Contents/MacOS/VMware Fusion Helper: illegal option -- 6

Nov 1 13:29:02 Top .com.vmware.fusionDaemon[577]: /Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/VMware Fusion Helper.app/Contents/MacOS/VMware Fusion Helper: illegal option -- 8

Nov 1 13:29:02 Top .com.vmware.fusionDaemon[577]: /Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/VMware Fusion Helper.app/Contents/MacOS/VMware Fusion Helper: illegal option -- 7

Nov 1 13:29:02 Top .com.vmware.fusionDaemon[577]: /Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/VMware Fusion Helper.app/Contents/MacOS/VMware Fusion Helper: illegal option -- 3

Nov 1 13:29:02 Top .com.vmware.fusionDaemon[577]: /Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/VMware Fusion Helper.app/Contents/MacOS/VMware Fusion Helper: illegal option -- 0

[Ixokai · Accepted solution]

Well, I figured out what was wrong with mine; I have multiple drives, and Mac OS X doesn't consistently number them in /dev/diskX nodes. When I first ran Fusion3, my boot camp partition was on /dev/disk3. Earlier today after rebooting, it was on /dev/disk1.

After rebooting a couple times to let everything randomly shuffle, once its on /dev/disk3 Windows loads up again.

A bit of googling shows this was a known issue for Fusion TWO YEARS ago, that Mac OS X doesn't provide consistent device nodes for drives... and while its pretty nutty for the OS to do that, it's pretty unacceptable for this to still be an issue in a newly released product.

This really, really, really needs to be fixed. A month ago.

To the OP: If you only have one drive we might not be having the same problem after all. 😕

[hoss713]

Thanks for the info. I too have multiple drives - I guess that's the problem. Thanks for the post!

Looks like I'll be sticking with Parallels Desktop unless VMware can fix this problem. Parallels does not have this problem...

lj

[hoss713]

So it turns out Parallels does have this problem as well. They just handle it better.

After a reboot, if the device id for the Boot Camp partition changes neither VMware or Parallels will be able to start the virtual machine using Boot Camp.

Here is how each handles the situation when the Boot Camp disk id changes:

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VMware Fusion 3:

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VMware shows an error in the Virtual Machine Library for the Boot Camp partition with the detailed error:

"The Boot Camp volume cannot be found.

If this volume is no longer required, you may safely delete

the entry from the library."

VMware also lists a new Boot Camp virtual machine attached to the new device id. At this point, you have to go through the virtual machine preparation process again on the new device id which is painful and makes using your Boot Camp partition as a virtual machine virtually useless.

-

---

-

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Parallels Desktop 5:

-

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Parallels displays a dialog box when you try and start the Boot Camp virtual machine:

"The Boot Camp partition "/dev/disk2s3" used by Hard Disk 1 is missing.

Please open the virtual machine configuration and select an existing Boot Camp partition in the Hard Disk 1 settings."

Click "OK" and then Choose "Virtual Machine->Configure" and navigate to the Hardware tab and choose "Hard Disk 1". You'll have a drop down menu for the Source which currently shows disk2 as the source disk. Click on the menu and you'll see the new disk id for the Boot Camp disk. Select that disk, click OK and then you can start up your Boot Camp partition. No new preparation process needed by the virtual machine.

This may sound hard, but it's quite trivial (albeit still annoying) and in my opinion, a better workaround than VMware's method.

-

---

As far as I know, the disk UUID doesn't change, so that would be a better way for both applications to keep track of the Boot Camp partition (granted, I don't know off hand if that can be done).

lj

[riv4]

So is there no workaround to this other than to keep playing VMWare roulette by restarting till the Boot Camp partition ends up on the node on which it was originally created?

This is really very annoying.

[eric_slosser]

Thanks to the clue on this thread, I found a workaround less painful than rebooting.

Find what disk your bootcamp volume is on:

- use the 'df' command, look for your bootcamp partitition.

Unmount that disk (using Finder)

- this may not be necessary, but it seemed like a good idea

Teach Fusion

- close Fusion

- open ~/Library/Preferences/com.vmware.fusion.plist

- find "%2Fdev%2Fdisk"

- replace the digit that follows that string with the correct digit

- launch Fusion

YMMV!

[MikeProAlaska]

In the plist file com.vmware.fusion.plist I could only find two children showing /dev/disk and they were the child of PLIgnoredBootCampDisks. Is this telling VMware Fusion to ignore these disks?

[Cineza]

My workaround for now is to keep 4 VM's (equal to the number of hard drives on my Mac Pro), 3 with error and 1 with the right ID...

By not deleting the ones with error you just cycle between them after each reboot!

[dhagberg]

I know this is an old thread, but have not seen any solutions to the problem so here is what I have.

I have found a work-around. Not really a fix, but will do until they solve the problem.

1) Open up the Virtual Machine Library.

2) Ctrl-Click the Boot Camp partition that shows the error and select Show in Finder. The directory will be something like %2Fdev%2Fdisk1 and will contain the VM for the Boot Camp partition.

3) Copy a shortcut of the VM to the desktop or somewhere else (Shortcut is created by holding command-option while dragging).

4) Double-click the shortcut and the VM will start and show in the library as the one in error, but everything appears to work for me.