New User: Terrible Experience

[bartop]

Using: Mac Mini w/MacOS Mojave 14.4

Fusion 10.1.6

Our company bought a Fusion license for Mac and I installed it on a Mac Mini that I need to have a Windows 10 VM.

This has been the worst experience I have ever had with any VM software.

1. I tried to copy over my existing VM via OVA/OVF. That failed. I don't recall specific errors but I gave up. It's okay to start over.

2. I tried to create a Windows 10 VM. That failed because the UI doesn't give me the option to adjust anything and defaults to 60 GB for the disk size, which is too much for this Mac Mini.

3. I eventually created an "other" VM with an 8GB drive image. Then I could get an option to create a 40GB image and I deleted the 8GB one. The I tried to install Windows 10 via USB drive. At first, it looked like it was working. I came back and the VM was a black screen. I couldn't get it to respond and had to reboot. Then Windows 10 said it was corrupted and that I had to re-install.

4. Fusion does not give you an easy way to boot from USB. I found the USB drive in the boot menu and was able to boot from file. Otherwise, I couldn't stop Fusion from booting the Windows drive, which was useless.

5. After another attempt at installing, Windows 10 froze at "Setting up devices". It didn't get stuck there with the animation running. It froze and never did anything. I waited 15 minutes or so and rebooted. Once again, problems booting and eventually, corrupted install.

6. Now I can't get Fusion to recognize the USB or give me any option to boot from that.

All I can think right now is that I want our company to get the money back for this license. I've used multiple VM platforms and never had such a terrible experience. Ever aspect of this almost seems contrived to prevent me from doing things. There is nothing more frustrating than software that prevents you from adjusting critical settings such as disk size, etc. This has been a massive waste of time. I have nothing to show for it.

If anyone can tell me how to get Fusion to just boot from USB, that would be helpful. We paid for this thing so I am going to try a little longer on it but this software is massively frustrating and if I can't get it to work soon, I want us to get our money back and switch to another platform.

[bartop]

Fusion simply refuses to show an options for USB devices. The USB drive is plugged in and recognized by MacOS but there are no options to connect in Fusion.

[bartop]

It looks like the big pain point was the poor handling of USB drives.

When I downloaded an ISO and used that, I was able to complete installation.

I still think that the UI is very lacking. I'm not sure why these design choices were made. There are probably ways to do what I want but they are not obvious or easy to access. And the USB issue seems to be an actual problem. The USB drive must have dropped out of accessibility and interrupted and/or corrupted the installation process, which made the install unusable.

TL;DR

You apparently can't reliably install from a USB drive, so make sure to have an ISO.

[RDPetruska]

1. I tried to copy over my existing VM via OVA/OVF. That failed. I don't recall specific errors but I gave up. It's okay to start over.

A virtual machine is just a set of document files to your host.  Just simply do a file copy from one machine to another. No reason to do an export and import.

[Mikero]

Thanks for the feedback!
FWIW, we never designed Fusion so you could install Windows or any OS from a USB stick, but it's an interesting feature request. I'll address the other points in your post as well...

[Mikero]

I tried to copy over my existing VM via OVA/OVF. That failed. I don't recall specific errors but I gave up. It's okay to start over.

As was mentioned, unless you're coming from a different hypervisor then you wouldn't need to export/import. Just copy the .vmwarevm file to the new Mac, double-click, choose 'I moved it...' and you're off.

I tried to create a Windows 10 VM. That failed because the UI doesn't give me the option to adjust anything and defaults to 60 GB for the disk size, which is too much for this Mac Mini.

In the last step of the New VM wizard, there is an option to 'Customize'. Here you can make all the changes you need before booting for the first time. I do this with every VM I create. After you click 'customize settings' it will ask to save the VM somewhere, and then bring up the Settings dialogue.

I eventually created an "other" VM with an 8GB drive image. Then I could get an option to create a 40GB image and I deleted the 8GB one.

That's because 'other' doesn't assume any defaults and requires you to customize. You can just 'resize' the disk without having to delete and make a new one.

Fusion does not give you an easy way to boot from USB

Right, that's because this is not a workflow we designed for. in 2006 when we first built Fusion, most folks weren't booting from USBs, they were booting from CD and DVDs.

So while we don't expect it to work, it is an interesting feature request that we're open to looking at it. Installing from an .ISO image file would be MUCH faster however.

After another attempt at installing, Windows 10 froze at "Setting up devices".

On that one I'm not sure, could be a bug, could be something else. Possibly our bad there, but it's hard to say without logs. If you were trying to install from USB that could be part of the problem.

Now I can't get Fusion to recognize the USB or give me any option to boot from that.

Right, we don't consider USB a bootable device when it is passed through. Specifically, we did not write code in support of this workflow. Users are expected to install from .iso files.

The best workflow would be as follows:

• Grab a Win10 ISO from here: Download Windows 10 Disc Image (ISO File)
• File > New > From .ISO > choose the .iso you downloaded
• Customize your VM settings (Personally I always bump the CPU and RAM, enable 3D graphics acceleration and allocate 3GB of vRAM)
• Once the VM boots, wait until VMware Tools gets installed (drivers, etc...)
• After a couple of automatic reboots, you should be at the desktop where you can activate your Win10 license.
  • You could de-activate the current one, leaving one available on your Microsoft account, which you could then allocate to this VM.

All of that being said, I do wholly agree with you that we could do a better job of informing users of the expected workflows to get running, and making those workflows much easier.

Thanks for sharing your experience, please feel free to PM me directly or continue the discussion here if you want to go deeper on any of this.

[bartop]

Thanks for the feedback!

FWIW, we never designed Fusion so you could install Windows or any OS from a USB stick, but it's an interesting feature request.

Thanks. It isn't a method I commonly use but it seemed logical to try; if the VM can bridge physical ports from the host and it can boot from USB, then it seems reasonable.

As a matter of fact, I didn't do anything to set this up. When I started the VM for the first time, it automatically recognized the USB drive and booted from it. So, to me, this made it seem like it was an expected path for installation.

[bartop]

Thanks for the replies.

As was mentioned, unless you're coming from a different hypervisor then you wouldn't need to export/import. Just copy the .vmwarevm file to the new Mac, double-click, choose 'I moved it...' and you're off.

I was coming from a different hypervisor, so the import was necessary.

In the last step of the New VM wizard, there is an option to 'Customize'. Here you can make all the changes you need before booting for the first time. I do this with every VM I create. After you click 'customize settings' it will ask to save the VM somewhere, and then bring up the Settings dialogue.

The problem with this is that clicking "Finish" or "Customize" does exactly the same thing - it invokes a save dialog. I describe this further, below.

That's because 'other' doesn't assume any defaults and requires you to customize. You can just 'resize' the disk without having to delete and make a new one.

Ah, I see about resizing it. The problem for me is still the aforementioned issue of being forced to create (save) the VM before making adjustments.

Right, we don't consider USB a bootable device when it is passed through. Specifically, we did not write code in support of this workflow. Users are expected to install from .iso files.

That makes sense. Again, my primary problem with this is that Fusion immediately booted from the installation USB drive after I created the VM. I didn't have to do anything to get to this point, which led me to believe that this was expected behavior.

The best workflow would be as follows:

[...]

All of that being said, I do wholly agree with you that we could do a better job of informing users of the expected workflows to get running, and making those workflows much easier.

Thanks for sharing your experience, please feel free to PM me directly or continue the discussion here if you want to go deeper on any of this.

Thanks again for responding. I used an ISO workflow and that worked. Using ISOs is the normal procedure for me, as well.

My take-away from the experience (and what I would offer as feedback) is the following:

1. The "customize settings" is very misleading because it prompts the user to save (just like "Finish") and does not update or return to the summary.
   1. This is a very counter-intuitive procedure. Your software says to me that I'm creating a VM with a certain amount of RAM, disk space, etc. Then you have a "Customize" button that ostensibly lets me customize those settings but immediately goes to a "Save" dialog. After I save it, I don't get an option to change the settings. What I get is the resulting VM (the window even pops up!), created with default settings and a control panel. What I expect is to be able to adjust things, see that in the summary and then click "Finish". What "Customize" really means is "open up settings control panel after VM is created".
   2. Imagine going to a website to buy a shirt in blue. The shop shows a brown shirt. You click "customize" and it goes through a checkout procedure instead of asking you what color you want. Once your order is placed, then it lets you choose the color. That's what "Customize settings" feels like in Fusion.
2. Don't automatically map and boot from the host USB.
   1. I didn't have a Windows 10 ISO at-the-ready but I had already plugged in the installation USB. Fusion immediately found it and booted it, without any configuration or prompting. This made the integration seem expected, as it was seamless. If the VM can boot from the USB device, then it seems logical that it should be able to install from there.
   2. If Fusion can boot from USB but cannot reliably install an OS for whatever reason, that would be a good warning to pop up after a VM is created. In particular, if Fusion detects a bootable USB drive on the host (and especially that Fusion will boot from in the VM!), then a warning seems relevant.