Fusion 8 trial is going poorly - Win8.1 VM, imported from Parallels, won't start

[RadioPhil]

I've been fed up by numerous small issues with Parallels, so I thought I'd trial VMware. After importing my Parallels VM, it won't start in Fusion. Some details:

Fusion 8.0.1-3094680, downloaded today from VMware.

I installed it, accepting all defaults. I let it import my working Parallels VM. Upon first try, Windows wouldn't start. Having used Windows for many years, I'm familiar with its built-in startup repair functions, so I followed them, like so:

All the below took place within the VM, in the VM's window, at attempted first boot.

"Your PC ran into a problem..."

"Automatic Repair"

"Diagnosing your PC," which recommended that I just try restarting, So I did.

"Your PC ran into a problem..."

"Automatic Repair"

"Diagnosing you PC"  This time I selected Advanced Options > Troubleshoot > Advanced Options > Startup Repair, which took me through "diagnosing your PC," checking disk for errors," "repairing disk errors." Which didn't help - I ended up back at the beginning: "Your PC ran into a problem..."

I tried the whole process again, and am still unable to boot: "Your PC ran into a problem..."

Oh, my Mac is a MBP, 2014 model, 16GB RAM, running a fully updated Yosemite OS X. There's about 150GB of SSD free space, and the VM is assigned 8GB of RAM.

Any ideas? I'll be happy to check things if suggested, and report back.

[dariusd · Accepted solution]

The first thing I'd try would be uninstalling the Parallels drivers/additions/tools from inside the VM before importing it -- i.e. from within Parallels.  Have you tried that?

Check that Parallels knows that it's a Windows 8.1 VM (or the nearest guest OS type it understands).  We depend on knowledge of the guest OS type to perform various tasks during import, and we could get confused if it's not set correctly before import.  Relatedly, check which disk controller we chose to use for the virtual hard disk.  SATA is probably the safest option, although I can't predict for sure how well that would work if you were using a different disk controller type for the VM in Parallels.

Hope this is of some help!  Feel free to post back here if none of these resolve the problem.

Cheers,

--

Darius

[RadioPhil]

Thank you Darius. Your first suggestion, uninstall Parallels Tools before importing, solved the problem.