Hi,
The steps are roughly as mentioned, however there are a few extra things to keep into account and as such these are my recommended steps:
- if you have any snapshots in the VM then it is recommended to commit those before moving the VM to the new machine. In particular the ones taken where the VM was running while taking a snapshot should be committed as the CPU/GPU state in the new host might have differences that are just too big to take into account in a running state.
- shutdown, not suspend, your VM before copying.
- shutdown Fusion - officially not required, but a good precautions in making sure that Fusion is not having any additional files open.
- copy the VM bundle to an external disk (you now have a backup, do not trust Time Machine with your backups, you are likely to be burned if you do!)
- on the new machine copy the VM to the documents folder or the local Virtual Machines folder under documents
- In Fusion use -> File Open and point it to your virtual machine.
- At this point in time I tend to make a snapshot at the target machine (not required, but it helps sometimes)
- Start the VM.
- Fusion will ask "did you copy or move" ---> Answer "move" as otherwise your VM will get new virtual hardware and you will have to re-activate Windows again.
- On first boot Fusion will ask to upgrade the virtual hardware, which you probably should just do and it will also update VMware Tools.
- Reboot after the VMware Tools update
- Everything fine here? Then remove the snapshot from before the first boot.
--
Wil
