Moving from high sierra and fusion 10.1.3 OS: win 7 to Catalina on new MacBook Pro

[Gaial2020]

I had a 9 year old MacBook 17" PowerBook running Fusion 10.1.3 and Windows 7. i just purchased a new MacBook Pro that is rather robust. When I used TimeMachine to port over everything from my computer, it looks like it may have the contents of what was in the Fusion Drive, but I am afraid to open it since it is running Windows 7 and older version of Fusion. What is the proper order to save my data, upgrade to Fusion Version 11 and Windows 10? Which order do I do it in? Do I try to open Fusion and see what happens or is that dangerous? Do I upgrade Fusion and then upgrade Windows from within Fusion?

Thanks so much for your info. I have been trying to reach a Technical Representative with the Fusion group and have not had any luck. Could be due to our COVID 19 times. It used to be so easy to reach a repesentative there in the past.

I appreciate any insight you can provide.

[ColoradoMarmot]

Ok, so first, time machine is unreliable to migrate virtual machines.  Try these steps:

-  On the old machine

1) Run Fusion and see if the virtual machine is suspended or shut down.

2) If it's suspended, start it, then shut it down inside the guest.

3) Remove all snapshots

4) Close Fusion and copy the virtual machine (using finder) to an external drive

- on the new machine

1) install Fusion 11.5.3

2) copy the old virtual machine to the new one from the external drive (which will be your disaster backup)

3) Boot the VM.  It'll prompt you to upgrade the virtual hardware.  once booted it should automatically trigger the tools update

4) shut down the VM

5) copy the VM off to a safe place

6) upgrade the guest to windows 10

[Gaial2020]

Hi Dhotka,

Thanks for your response. To clarify,  I no longer have my old computer. It died and I just have the time machine backup that I migrated to my new computer.

Are you saying that I should install Fusion 11.5.3 as a completely new install and not as an upgrade to my older version of Fusion?

Do I then open it and install Windows 10 onto it?

Since I already have something on my computer from the Time Machine backup, will it just ask for a location and be able to open up my old data and programs? Many programs will probably not work since they were for Windows 7. Most of my Windows files were stored in the bootcamp drive on my older Mac, but viewable by Fusion, so they may be on a windows drive, but not on the Time Machine drive.

Please respond given this added information.

Thanks, Gail

[RDPetruska]

There should be no reason not to keep running your Windows 7 virtual machine.  As long as it is a complete/valid backup, it will launch and run.  It won't care what host it is on - that's pretty much the point of virtualization.

As far as the Fusion application - VMware does not provide "upgrade" versions - all of the software downloaded from their site are full install versions.  You could try running your older version of Fusion, but if it doesn't work, you likely will need the newer version (and have to pay for that license upgrade).

[ColoradoMarmot]

Unfortunately, if it was only on bootcamp, and not a standalone virtual machine, then I'm afraid you're out of luck.  Time machine won't have backed any of that information up at all.

A standalone virtual machine will have a .vmwarevm extension on it - is there anything like that on the machine?