OpenGL Video error and Issues Running windows 10 Bootcamp VM with Fusion Player 12

[Fozzie_Bear1]

I wonder if anyone can give me some help and guidance on the following issues.

I have been running my VMs using VMware Fusion 8.5 on a late 2015  27” iMac running Sierra.

Fusion 8.5 was pre-installed as was Windows 10 Bootcamp. Apart from a few issues with Windows 10 activation when switching between a Virtual Machine and booting directly into windows its been pretty stable.

I have had to bit the bullet and upgrade to Catalina due to software issues such as Office 2016 for Mac going end of life, and I needed to install Office 365.

I was aware that 8.5 was not compatible with Catalina so have installed Fusion Player 12.0.

All of my VMs upgraded and worked fine in Fusion Player except Bootcamp. It could not find the .vmx! The VMware Knowledge base refers to the boot.ini file but I followed the advice on this forum and deleted and the recreated the Bootcamp VM.This worked but I then had a black screen with a cursor although I could see from disk activity they the VM was running.

I therefore booted directly into Windows 10 and upgraded to November 21H2 build but noticed that it was running on Windows 10 default Video adapter driver! As I never installed Bootcamp I have never checked this before but although the right click context menu had AMD references, the driver itself was not installed. I therefore downloaded and installed the appropriate driver from the AMD website.

On first boot the screen broke up into horizontal jagged lines forcing me to do a hard reboot. On reboot everything seems fine when running Windows 10 native.

Now when I start boot camp as a VM in Fusion under MAC, I get video and the VM is again useable, however I have two issues:-

• The windows 10 taskbar is transparent i.e. you can just make out the icons but nothing more.
• I get an error message from Radeon Software. “Failed to create OpenGL Context ……….. Install a driver providing OpenGL 2.0 or higher”.

The former might be as a result of the latter but I am stumped.

Is this a limitation of the VMware tools or Bootcamp Drivers?

[Technogeezer · Accepted solution]

When you booted that Boot Camp VM in Fusion, are VMware Tools installed? And is Fusion offering to upgrade them? Upgrading them or re-installing them might be a good first step.

The Radeon software will not work when running that Boot Camp VM under Fusion. That's because the graphics adapter that any VM (including Boot Camp VMs) sees when running under Fusion sees is a VMware SVGA virtual graphics adapter. The VM can not control or access features of the hardware graphics adapter directly. Don't run the Radeon software when booted under Fusion as it won't do anything (except give you those error messages)...

[ColoradoMarmot]

Unless something has changed, I think you also need to use the Apple-provided bootcamp drivers, not the AMD ones

[Technogeezer]

I thought the same thing too, but found an Apple tech note https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208908 that says for Macs that have AMD graphics cards,  Apple does recommends you use the AMD drivers in Boot Camp. It looks like @Fozzie_Bear1 has one of those Macs.

[ColoradoMarmot]

That rings a bell now, that Apple stopped providing boot camp tools (It's been a long time since I bothered with it, since you can't bitlocker a boot camp volume).

I wonder if Fusion handles those gracefully?  I'm sure that the AMD utility won't work...

[Fozzie_Bear1]

Yes Apple recommends installing the AMD driver for bootcamp on my system.

[Fozzie_Bear1]

I could kick myself. I tried to reinstall VMtools when I had the problem with the black screen. However I completely forgot about it when I had installed the AMD drivers. Of course VMware uses a virtual adapter and requires the VMWare tools. As soon as the video driver was installed as part of the VMware Tools setup the toolbar returned and no more OpenGL errors.

Many thanks to you and the other contributors for your advice.

One final thing. As before when the virtual machine starts the window is a very long letterbox extending off the screen. I have to drag one side in to see the desktop. Once windows has properly booted and the video driver takes over it returns tro a normal aspect ratio. Is there anything I can do about this or just put up with this behaviour?

Again many thanks