MacOS Catalina (10.15) host + VmWare Fusion 11.5 + Windows 7 guest on Bootcamp partition - stable?

[kevinp2]

I am currently using the following combination:

MacOS High Sierra (10.13.6) host + VmWare Fusion 10.1.6 + Windows 7 guest on Bootcamp partition

I want to upgrade this combination to:

MacOS Catalina (10.15) host + VmWare Fusion 11.5 + Windows 7 guest on Bootcamp partition

Any feedback from anyone running the latter combination?  And what is the best upgrade path?  First upgrade Fusion from 10.1.6 to 11.5 and then upgrade Catalina?

Any and all feedback is appreciated!  This is my bread and butter work system, so stability is critically important.

[scott28tt]

Considering this article: VMware Knowledge Base

Your plan seems sound, Fusion 11.5 is supported by both OS versions.

[kevinp2]

Thanks for providing the excellent matrix.  It looks like first upgrading to Fusion 11.5 is the only supported way to go.

[wila]

Hi,

I might be wrong but I don't think that windows 7 bootcamp will work with macOS Catalina. The reason I think that is because:

- Catalina only supports Windows 10 for bootcamp

- Catalina repartitions your hard disk during the upgrade and chances of it breaking your bootcamp partition are not too small.

That is all regardless of VMware in the picture.

In your case I would import your Windows 7 bootcamp partition and migrate it to a VM before running any of these upgrades and certainly before the upgrade to Catalina.

If unsure, take a full clone of your disk that you can put back (not time machine as it won't do anything for your boot camp partition)

--

Wil

[kevinp2]

An intermediate update:  After performing a backup with Carbon Copy Cloner and WinClone, I upgraded to Fusion 11.5.3 and am now at the following place:

MacOS High Sierra (10.13.6) host + VmWare Fusion 11.5.3 + Windows 7 guest on Bootcamp partition

First impressions are that this combination is stable.  I will test at this spot for a couple of days and then look at upgrading to Catalina.

[ColoradoMarmot]

I'm 99% sure that Wila's right and Catalina won't work with Windows 7 on boot camp.  If you're going to try the upgrade, I'd convert the BC VM to a real one as a contingency.

[kevinp2]

Would it be an option to upgrade Windows 7 to Windows 10 first?

Of course, I would have to upgrade many of the apps too, ugh.

[ColoradoMarmot]

Well, Windows 7 is out of support these days, so either isolating (i.e. not going online) or upgrading is important.  If you don't have a specific boot camp need, I'd definitely just run a real VM and turn off networking instead of upgrading everything.

[wila]

Hi,

As dlhotka says, migrate the boot camp partition to a VM (Via menu -> File -> Import )

A VM has the advantage that you can:

- use snapshots

- make easy backups, by copying the whole VM bundle to an external disk when it is turned off, or by using something like Vimalin when it is running

- move the VM to another mac

It all becomes a lot easier to experiment and safe guard your VM once you let go of the boot camp idea.

This does mean that you loose the ability to reboot into Windows, which might -or might not be- a requirement.

For me it has been a long time since I have used boot camp.

I just remember now that I have a mac mini, which runs Catalina that I sometimes use for testing.

It used to have a Windows 7 boot camp partition, let me try and see if any of that still works...

... nope..

Could not open a file that it depends on (or something error)

Deleting that boot camp VM and then trying to recreate it gives me:

"VMware Fusion could not find any boot camp volumes on this mac"

That box has VMware Fusion 8 (lol), but also the Tech Preview. The above was Fusion 8.5.10 (not using it, just testing)

On VMware Fusion 20H1 Tech Preview I can create a VM from the boot camp volume, but does it run?

Yes it boots, but turns out that it is Windows 10 (Looks like I misremember it being Windows 7, never used it, wow ... Windows 10 version 1607, that's a while back)

--

Wil

[kevinp2]

Unfortunately, I need the ability to boot into Windows occasionally.  I run a big data app that is Windows only.  It has slow performance under VmWare Fusion.  It runs at native speed when booted into Windows and I need that capability fairly often.

[wila]

Hi,

Pity... I would still create the VM as an emergency fall back and then go forward with upgrading to Windows 10 before upgrading to macOS Catalina.

--

Wil

[kevinp2]

That is a good idea, thank you.

I have also been learning that it is possible to run Bootcamp from an external hard drive.  So that could also be an option for me.

[kevinp2]

Another intermediate update:  I decided to migrate to macOS Mojave (10.14) first.  I am now running:

macOS Mojave (10.14) + VmWare Fusion 11.5.3 + Windows 7 guest on Bootcamp partition

This seems stable at first glance.  I will run it for a week or so and see how it works before going on to Catalina.

Interestingly, there were many macOS apps that worked under 10.14 that no longer worked under 10.15  I had to upgrade several.  I have found CleanMyMacX to be a useful tool to clean up a bunch of old apps, including identifying 32-bit apps.

[ColoradoMarmot]

I believe that Catalina no longer supports Windows 7 as boot camp - just a heads up.

[kevinp2]

Another small intermediate step: I upgraded VMWare from 11.5.3 to 11.5.7  

This was painful!  I ran into the Could not open /dev/vmmon: Broken pipe problem and it took a long time to fix it.

[kevinp2]

Update after a long time:  I finally bit the bullet and upgraded my BootCamp to Windows 10.  Just finished all the work and everything seems to be working properly.

Before upgrade:

• MacOS Mojave
• VMWare 11.5.7
• Bootcamp: Windows 7

After upgrade:

• MacOS Catalina
• VMWare 11.5.7 (no change)
• Bootcamp: Windows 10 which works under Fusion also.

Upgrade path:

• Backup everything often!
• Upgrade Windows 7 to Windows 10 first!  This is still free as of the time of this post, provided that you have a licensed copy of Windows 7.
• Boot Windows 10 using Bootcamp and verify functionality.  I had to install Apple Software Update to get updated hardware drivers for the MacBook keyboard for Windows 10 installed.  Office 2010 no longer works, so I will have to upgrade it, lol.
• Activate Windows 10 when running under Bootcamp.
• Boot MacOS.
• Start Windows 10 under VmWare Fusion.
• Uninstall VmWare Tools completely, reboot Windows and install Vmware Tools again.
• Activate Windows 10 again when running under Vmware Fusion.  
• I had to mess around with screen resolutions for a bit until I got them to work acceptably.
• Finally, upgrade MacOS Mojave to Catalina.