Bios opens in user mode

[townsbg]

I have vmware fusion 5 on mountain lion and whenever I enter the BIOS of my VM I can't change anything. On the right side under item specific help it says "All items on this menu cannot be modified in user mode. If any items require change, please consult your systems Supervisor." Most of the fields are greyed out. I don't know what I did to cuase this and I don't see any options pertaining that. I have previously been able to edit settings in the BIOS.:smileyconfused:

[michaelstump]

That happens if a Supervisor password has been set within the BIOS. I just tested this and can reproduce the behavior you're describing. If you can't remember the password that was set, and you have write access to the VM's nvram file, you can wipe that file out (make a backup first!) and the BIOS will be reset to factory defaults.

EDIT: So it looks like this can happen if your VM's .vmx file already has a bootOrder defined. I tried deleting that line from the .vmx, saving the change, and starting the VM. Then the Boot menu was available.

Of course, most of the changes you'd want to make there are available in the VM's Edit Settings page, but at least this should get you to the BIOS setup if that's your thing.

mike

[ewuyica]

how to remove that "bios.bootOrder" line from the vmx using VMWare API? I used the VMWare API to set the boot order, after that, it cannot be removed. Anyway to use VMWare API  to remove that line again?

Thanks

Yingchun

[admin]

The "Restore Defaults" button in Settings -> Startup Disk will clear the bios.bootOrder and hddOrder values.

[ewuyica]

I am using VMWare API VirtualMachineConfigInfo to set boot order, which it will creates the bios.bootOrder entry in the vmx file. Anyway to use the VMWare API to clear this entry? Or any API to do the "Restore Defaults"?

[justinr1234]

michaelstump​ solution worked with clearing the bootOrder setting from the .vmx file and saving. Then boot to your firmware and it allows the setting to be changed.

[slo_hachi]

Wow...8 years later and this post helped me out! Thank you!

[wila]

Hi,

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@slo_hachi wrote:

Wow...8 years later and this post helped me out! Thank you!

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While that's good, beware that you don't need to do anything low level.
Go to Virtual Machine menu -> Power on to Firmware

that's it.

--
Wil

[slo_hachi]

Hi Wila,

Unfortunately I don't really know what you are talking about at all.

I had a VM that was not booting correctly in vSphere 6.7 and while it's a different product, the solution posted here to edit the .vmx file was exactly what I needed. 

So kudos to @michaelstump for the helpful info!

Thanks,

Stephen