Fusion 12 Hanging on startup

[PrinceAlbert]

Today for no apparent reason, when I started VM Fusion 12, it just hangs.

What should I do first to resolve this problem.

I've been running Big Sur since it's release.

I have removed it and re-installed, same thing happens

[PF-ONCA]

Mikero,

When the hang condition is happening it's fully repeatable.  Reboots, cold shut-downs, even deep clean un-install and re-install using the instructions I linked above.  Even after the fresh install it still hung, which makes me think the un-install instructions are leaving some things behind.  What might be useful for future users stumbling across this post is if you can share instructions on exactly what logs (VMWare, Mac Console, Activity Monitor, etc)... any kind of metric you would want to capture as the hang is taking place someone might be able to capture the info needed.  They'll have plenty of time to collect the logs while waiting for Fusion to come back to life!   I can confirm that once you wait the few hours and it auto-recovers it doesn't seem to hang again after that.  Multiple quits and re-launches today and it loaded right away, as usual.

[Mikero]

 What might be useful for future users stumbling across this post is if you can share instructions on exactly what logs (VMWare, Mac Console, Activity Monitor, etc)

Simply put, we just need folks to click Help > Collect Support Information, and post a link to the zip file somewhere that we can get.

This is what we _always_ want when we ask for logs.

[joneseym]

Hi @Mikero

I had this issue too.    I uninstalled Fusion 12.1 after experiencing the issue and then did repeated re-installs, while increasingly removing and VMware files I could find except the VM bundles themselves.   On the last one, I also moved the VM bundles to different folders.   Fusion remained unresponsive after every attempt.

On the last and cleanest reinstall, I left it going and it finished whatever it was doing after around 15 hours, based on the accumulated CPU time (it was 100% busy on one thread the whole time it was unresponsive).

I collected Support Information and have uploaded it to Google Drive.  I don't want to post the link here publicly in case it contains some private info, but I am happy to share directly on request.

Thanks,

Martin

[RS007_SG]

same issue here and no luck after waiting for one night. 

Have to try reset macos? 

[j3rm]

I have a Mac mini that run a VM to convert a browser ( PRTG Server monitor Map)  to a video for security monitor display. This config has been working flawlessly for years. We upgraded MacOS and then forced to upgrade VMware to 12. Now everyday I have to spend 15-30 mins messing with vmware trying to reboot the VM. VM locks up hard. Menus do not show up. I have to reboot the macmini some times to get Vmware to clear up. Forcing the shutdown of the app does not always clean up the mess.

I have 3 Disk systems attached, data NVR Storage, TimeMachine, Network TimeMachine for MPB on network.

At this point I can almost reliably reproduce this issue ever 12-24 hours. If someone from support wants to tell me what information they want from this I am happy to let them connect to the mac mini or provide logs, run beta builds etc.. Vmware has be come very unstable for my usage.

MacMini 2018 i7 64GB ram.

[sevanspowell]

We unfortunately cannot do that if we cannot launch VMware Fusion, unless you can provide us with some other way of collecting full logs.

I am also encountering this issue on a brand-new MacBook Pro:

macOS Big Sur 11.3.1 (20E241)

MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2020, Four Thunderbolt 3 ports)

2 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5

16 GB 3733 MHz LPDDR4X

Intel Iris Plus Graphics 1536 MB

1TB Flash Storage

Using the VMware-Fusion-12.1.2-17964953.dmg installer with the verified sha256 sum of 873049d4080168b56085c5b67be1d4eeb14debc0e6cf176dbd52c78518d0b883.

VMware Fusion was only the second piece of software I installed after Lastpass, and this is my first day of owning the MacBook.

Hopefully that at least provides a (somewhat expensive) reproduction environment, even if I can't provide full logs at the moment.

I've attached everything in ~/Library/Logs/VMware Fusion

[sevanspowell]

So I restarted my machine while Fusion was not responding, and it seems to work fine now.

The first thing it presented me with was the "Terms and Conditions", so possibly it encountered some issue while trying to display that page.

[BobHackett2]

Luckily I don't have this issue every time I try to open Fusion, but I have had it a few times lately.  Here is the support information I collected.

[Mafi7878]

I experienced the same issue - all of a sudden VM Ware Fusion refuses to start - i let my Macbook run for over 10 hours and it did not return ?!? That is really frustrating. i tried uninstalling and reinstalling with the latest dmg "VMware-Fusion-12.2.1-18811640_x86.dmg". But no luck - Does anybody have a good hint what i could try ?

Thanks and best regards

Manfred

[KarlCep]

I had to wipe my hard drive and reinstall everything (including the OS). The first time I started VMWare Fusion (latest version), it hung, and I'm now waiting for hours and hours to see if it will magically finish starting up.

This issue was reported a year ago, and there still is NO fix from VMWare!? Why is that? I'm not very confident that I will pay to upgrade Fusion any longer, and will instead look at competitor solutions, such as Parallels (which supports the M1 chip, too). I've waited long enough for VMWare to fix this issue, but they don't appear to want to do so, so they have probably lost a customer. 😞

[Mafi7878]

a small update from my side. A week after gotting it to work i am again facing the problem. And this is really annoying clearing and uninstalling everything.

I think here goes another customer for vmware fusion ... 

[jeremyh]

I had this problem, and although I can't perform this "Collect support information" task, I have run the "VMware Fusion Problem Reporter.tool" and have the output from it. It says to report the issue at 

http://www.vmware.com/support/sr/sr_login.jsp

But then I can't create create an issue because I get the error message:

"The selected Entitlement Account has no products associated with it. Try selecting a different Entitlement Account to see the products you are entitled to."

I left VMWare fusion running for a while and it came up working, just like as mentioned in this thread. I also have the problem reporter files from after it started working again. I assume these files would be valuable in order to diagnose/fix this problem, but I guess because I don't pay for support I can't report bugs? Where can I upload these files?

[Mafi7878]

from time to time - vmware fusion is open up again - but i am not willing to wait for several hours on a randomly base to use an application. i am also willing to upload my logfiles to find the solution, but as jeremy mentioned - i don't know where to upload it.

[6uta]

Get the similiar issue

"VMware Fusion DUIPopulateGPUData: Failed to find VRAM subdata for GPU Intel Iris Plus Graphics 645, giving up"

Restarted and reinstalled, nothing help.

Let's see if it fix by itself after night.

[Texiwill]

Hello,

The following solution worked for me:

- Uninstall Fusion (per instructions)

- Reinstall Fusion

- Start Fusion: Hangs

- Kill Fusion

- Move the VMs directory to a new name. e.g. mv VMs VMs.olde

- Launch Fusion (it now runs but gives an error on not finding the VMs). Fusion Application is now running

- Move the VMs folder back to the old name. e.g. mv VMs.olde VMs

- Fusion magically sees the VM and I can now launch the VM just fine

It looks like the instructions is missing file or two. Fusion will try to launch your last VM and something is causing it to have issues. Corrupted plist perhaps. But once you move the folder to a new name and back it clears up.

Best regards,

[PetterWendel]

I stumbled on this today after having several problems with Monterey (macOS 12.2.1), Microsoft Outlook crashing, Microsoft Teams crashing, slow etc.

My VMware Fusion stopped to work after I rebooted my computer and resetting some work related integrations to macOS

So I tried the 'wait' game but after 30 minutes I got tired of that so I followed this guide instead;

https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1017838

And it worked afterwards! I guess some preferences were out of date/ corrupted. I also reinstalled VMware Fusion but that did not single handedly help.

[mattyjames]

I had this issue on start-up today. I more or less followed advice in previous 2 posts - I uninstalled fusion (i used ccleaner) but manually drag to bin i guess fine to do to - then i went to the various library locations mentioned here https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1017838 and deleted any left over fusion related files/folders. I also went to my user account library and did the same. I then reinstalled fusion and boom all good! It asked me to locate my virtual machine etc... and up an running. Thanks to the forum for guidance. 

[mattyjames]

I had this issue on start-up today. I more or less followed advice in previous 2 posts - I uninstalled fusion (i used ccleaner) but manually drag to bin i guess fine to do to - then i went to the various library locations mentioned here https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1017838 and deleted any left over fusion related files/folders. I also went to my user account library and did the same. I then reinstalled fusion and boom all good! It asked me to locate my virtual machine etc... and up an running. Thanks to the forum for guidance. 

[blahblahyooho]

Same issue here: Application Not Responding and the same error in my logs:

2022-06-17T04:25:40.006Z In(05) VMware Fusion DUIPopulateGPUData: Failed to find VRAM subdata for GPU Intel HD Graphics 530, giving up

It has happened multiple times now...I have an exam tomorrow and don't have time to wait 6 hours for it resolve itself. Ridic for a product I'm paying for and is new.

MacOS: 12.3.1

VMware Fusion 12.2.3

[Technogeezer]

Simply stating "same issue here" without all the details specific to your configuration doesn't help us help you.

Please post the vmware.log file in the VM's directory in addition to the vmware-vmfusion.log - it contains more information.

Also, can you share the Mac model that you're running?

If this issue had been occurring multiple times, waiting until the last minute ("I have an exam tomorrow") doesn't give anyone here (who are not VMware employees, but other users) a chance to look into what might be going on.