Accepted Solutions
Hi,
This should work without having to go through the .OVF route. That will only complicate matters.
Your steps _should_ be fine, but there are a few gotcha's.
The first important one is to shut down the VM (and not suspend) before copying the VM to an external disk.
It is also recommended that you commit all snapshots before doing so.
Another one is to shut down VMware Fusion before you make the copy.
After you have copied the VM to your new laptop, you can add it to VMware Fusion.
On the first start, your VMware Fusion will ask "did you copy or move" the VM.
You should answer "Move". The reason for that is that if you answer "copy" then VMware Fusion will initialize some of the virtual hardware devices with new hardware ID's and your Windows will need to be reactivated.
There should not be a "windows repair" or anything on boot of the OS.
If you still do see that then perhaps the disk you used to migrate the VM has problems and I would recommend to use another disk.
--
Wil
Hi,
This should work without having to go through the .OVF route. That will only complicate matters.
Your steps _should_ be fine, but there are a few gotcha's.
The first important one is to shut down the VM (and not suspend) before copying the VM to an external disk.
It is also recommended that you commit all snapshots before doing so.
Another one is to shut down VMware Fusion before you make the copy.
After you have copied the VM to your new laptop, you can add it to VMware Fusion.
On the first start, your VMware Fusion will ask "did you copy or move" the VM.
You should answer "Move". The reason for that is that if you answer "copy" then VMware Fusion will initialize some of the virtual hardware devices with new hardware ID's and your Windows will need to be reactivated.
There should not be a "windows repair" or anything on boot of the OS.
If you still do see that then perhaps the disk you used to migrate the VM has problems and I would recommend to use another disk.
--
Wil
Hi,
I'm not sure if booting from USB works nowadays.
There will be ways to do so, but it might involve having to boot into the UEFI shell and select the correct boot partition from there.
Perhaps someone else knows.
What I would do in your case however is to download an iso file directly from Microsoft.
Eg. via: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10ISO
If you visit that link from within macOS using Safari then you'll be able to download the iso directly.
From the iso file you can boot your VM.
As long as you install the same version to a VM that already has an activated Windows 10 install on there, it should still work.
Beware to install the exact same version of Windows 10 (as in same edition/features, it can be a newer version)
--
Wil
