Transport (VMDB) error -14

[DearBrian]

I was a customer of VMware for years up to version 8. Various things happened since but now I'm back with a new MacBook Pro M1 Max. I want to burn some DVDs for the distributed family using the Windows program Imgburn and I stumbled over the "VMware Fusion Player – Personal Use Licence" offer which sounds perfect for my limited requirements.

I think I followed the installation procedure correctly and I entered the serial number for my copy of Windows 7 Home Premium. However, when launching the application and clicking on the big arrow I got a message stating: "This version of VMware Fusion is for Intel-based Macs, but it is being run on an Apple silicon based Mac via Rosetta-2 See KB-84273"  This sounded promising.

I clicked on OK and then another shorter message came up: "Transport (VMDB) error -14: Pipe connection has been broken" I pressed OK and the window went back to displaying the big arrow.

I rebooted my machine but the result was the same.

The Mac is running Monterey 12.0.1 and has very little on it for the time being.

I wonder where I am going wrong? Am I posting this on the right board? Thanks in advance for any advice.

[Technogeezer]

VMware already has a publicly available free Tech Preview of Fusion that runs on M1 Macs. They’ve even said they’re going to release a second pass of it shortly. What they haven’t said is when this will make it into a shipping officially released product. It does a very good job of running ARM architecture Linux distributions (Ubuntu, Fedora, Open SUSE, Debian, Lali and others).. and it will unofficially run Windows 11 for ARM albeit with functionality restrictions.

Although Windows will run under hypervisors on the M1, just because it works does not mean that Microsoft will fix a problem you find while running it. And they are not making it easy to license or find media for installation that’s not other than pre-release or preview versions  

As far as Microsoft goes - who knows what they are thinking and why they are being so… obstinate and pig-headed about licensing and support for Windows for ARM on Apple Silicon. It is rumored that there is an exclusivity agreement between Microsoft and Qualcomm that’s limiting them to supporting only Qualcomm ARM chips.

The M1 appears to implement what Windows for ARM needs to run otherwise it wouldn’t work on VMware or Parallels. So you wouldn’t think that it would be a big lift to give official OK to support under VMware or Parallels hypervisors  

Like applications, operating systems are programs too. They are compiled to run on same CPUs that ther applications are. It’s just that operating systems run closer to the hardware and abstract a lot of details and provide other services in order to make it easier to write applications. 

Your last “simple clarification question” has a lot of nuances to it. But the short and simplest answer is yes, if you want it to run natively for best performance you need to build it on every combination of operating system (macOS, Windows, and Linux) and chip set (Intel/AMD and ARM).

However both Apple and Microsoft have built translation features (Apple’s is called Rosetta 2)  into their ARM/M1 versions that allow most Intel applications to run on their ARM operating systems with acceptable performance. That helps users with the transition to new hardware and buys developers time to provide native ARM versions that get the most performance out of the new hardware. 

[gringley]

Thinking about this, for those of you that play Civ, the golden age of Mac, or maybe the golden age of X86 has ended.  We had from 2006 to 2022 Macs that could be anything we wanted because the world revolved around Intel.  There was always AMD, but AMD and Intel stayed compatible enough with each other that Microsoft and Linux could do whatever was needed under the hood to make the operating system work.  As Apple also supported the Intel world and Windows, Apple wrote Windows drivers for all the Apple hardware thus Microsoft could work with a well supported Apple platform. 

With ARM Microsoft started with Qualcomm back in 2015 or so.  Apple as I understand it licensed the same material that Qualcomm did, but Apple has no incentive at all to be compatible with Qualcomm like AMD did with Intel.  Apple has made it clear that as they pivot away from Intel they are pivoting away from Microsoft as well.  Microsoft has been a hardware competitor for several years, and Microsoft's success with their Studio I think begats the Apple Studio we saw this week. With Apple not writing any drivers or other code for Windows on ARM, Microsoft has no basis to support Windows on M1 Mac like they did Intel Mac.  VMware in turn is not going to put resources into this as neither Apple or Microsoft will appear to support them with assistance if they do.

So where does that leave us.  M1 ARM is clearly the best platform for an end user from a performance perspective.  It is also clear that if you can get Windows running on M1 ARM that is the best platform to run Windows on for performance as well.  The M1 Ultra should be off the scale if one can get Windows ARM running on it.  (So does the ARM Mac Pro get the M2, or the M1 Ultra Max?). It lets those of us using our Macs for everything keep using our Macs for everything.  But Apple is providing no support foundation for Windows ARM.

That leaves our favorite competitor.  Why do they have working Windows on M1 ARM?  Because they are hacking away and writing their own drivers and other code to make it work.  They download a Microsoft ISO for you and insert their own boot loader in that ISO.  They also install the Microsoft store for you even though Microsoft never provided the Store in the ARM previews.  At the end of the install they even put up a screen that says this is a real copy of Windows!  (if you have to say it is not) At some point their luck is going to run out I think.  Microsoft as does Apple and everybody is being pushed to provide secure unhackable operating systems.  Microsoft will either need to "come clean" that they are supporting the competitors efforts, or at some point lock the hacks out as if the competitor can hack the operating system so can the miscreants.