Fusion 11.5.6 locks up

[West5733]

I am running Windows 10 on an iMac (Catalina) using Fusion 11.5.7. Windows shows me this message after Windows has been idle for a period of time - maybe 30 minutes. If I hit Cancel, I can restart VM Ware and keep working, but that takes a bit of time. If I hit Continue, I get this blue box message.

This is new behavior that began after letting Windows update some patches today. I updated the large build awhile back and haven't had this problem until today. I uninstalled the patches, but this has not fixed the problem. I reinstalled VMWare tools but that didn't help either.

I have tried reinstalling Fusion but still get the same behavior. I suspect some kind of file corruption, but not sure how to fix this. Any suggestions would be appreciated. 

Attaching screen messages below.

[Technogeezer]

My first inclination based on that error message is to check the disk where the virtual machine resides to see if either

• you are running out of space on the disk or
• you are getting I/O errors reported by macOS (including USB disconnects if you happen to be running the VM from an external USB drive).

[West5733]

Well, now I've really messed up. I was trying to restore the file from documents virtual machines that ended in .vdmk but it wouldn't complete.

After I saw your message I wanted to check the disk space but couldn't get into windows. When I tried relaunching Fusion, I got a message that the 'file wasn't found'.

I tried reinstalling VMWare from the dmg but when it seems to be complete, I still get the 'file not found' message. The Virtual Machines folder is empty.

[Technogeezer]

I'm just fishing for some ideas here. Ordinarily macOS doesn't go and delete things on your hard drive.

How much space is left on that macOS disk that contains that Virtual Machines folder. You don't need to go into Windows to do that.

What "Virtual Machines" folder is coming back empty? Where is it located? Is it the one where you expect the <virtual machine name>.vmwarevm folder that contains the virtual machine's vmx and vmdk files to reside?

You don't by any chance have iCloud's "Optimize Mac Storage" option turned on, with the Virtual Machines folder located in your Documents folder?

I hope you're not using Time Machine to back up your virtual machines.. As they say in the movie Ghostbusters "it would be bad".

[West5733]

Hi, thanks for the reply.

I have a lot of space on the machine. I don't back up work files on time capsule, only system and application files if my memory serves me correctly. I use a Dropbox folder to save on Mac and auto backup on Dropbox. I access files in Windows via shared a shared folder.

I don't think Time Capsule is setup to back up the virtual machine. Can you tell by the attached image?

Regarding the Virtual Machines - when I was looking for the vmdk file that the original information box showed me, I came across the folder under Documents. There was only one file in the folder and it wasn't quite the same name, but ended in that extension. That was the file I tried to restore via Time Machine. Now the folder is empty.

Optimize Mac Storage is not turned on.

Should I try installing an older version of Fusion? I have dmg going back to version 8.5, then 10 (I think 10 was a paid upgrade.)

[West5733]

Hello again,

I just wanted to tell you that I've worked around my problem by creating a new virtual machine.

Kind of a big pain, but it seemed that my old one was totally gone and I finally gave up trying to figure out how to 'fix' the installation.

Thank you for your guidance. It was valuable.