VMware Fusion Pro 8.1: Causing computer to wake to black screen?

[JuanGuapo]

Dear VMware Friends,

So, I'm noticing an issue that I believe I've narrowed down to VMware Fusion Pro 8.1.

Occasionally, when I wake the Mac, it will wake only to a black screen. I'm unable to login so I have to do a hard reset to reboot into Mac OS X, and log in. I'm not seeing any crashes or kernel panics when this happens, I'm just simply not able to log in after the system has been sleeping, and I wake it.

Now, here's where Fusion comes in. If I do not run Fusion at all, meaning I never launch it, the system works fine for days (weeks?) without a problem; the sleep/wake functionality on my MBP works great. When I launch Fusion, run Windows 10, shut it down, quit Fusion, I will often get a wake-to-black-screen after putting the Mac to sleep. This is the part that boggles me because the app is supposed to be closed/quit yet it appears to have a deleterious effect on whether the Mac and wake or sleep.

Thus far, my only alternative is to not run Fusion; however, I'm curious if anyone else has run into this, and if there is any fix for it?

Specs are below, please advise. Thank you.

• mid-2015 15" MacBook Pro (DG)
• Integrated Intel Iris Pro; Discrete AMD Radeon R9 M370X 2GB VRAM
• 16GB RAM, 1TB PCIe SSD
• Mac OS X 10.11.5
• VMware Fusion Professional 8.1
• Windows 10 x64 Home Edition

[ChipMcK]

Sounds like you permitted a Guest to sleep, rather than letting OS X handle the task.

Turn off the Guest's ScreenSaver and do not permit the Guest to sleep at a time-out interval.

OS X handles sleeping and saving the screen very well; the Guests need not the concerned.

.Smooth Sailing!

[JuanGuapo]

Thank you, ChipMcK.‌ Actually, I was referring to the MacBook Pro itself waking to black screen, not the VM. I apologize if this was unclear in my original post.

[ChipMcK]

Actually, I was referring to the MacBook Pro itself waking to black screen, not the VM.

I am referring to OS X.  You describe to results on OS X when a  Guest's power management takes control and the difficulties to regain control of the computer.

[JuanGuapo]

The strange thing is even after quitting/closing Fusion altogether, the problem persists. At the moment, my only workaround is to shut down the machine each time after I quit Fusion. Is there another workaround you can suggest? Much appreciate the help.

[JuanGuapo]

Update.

I reset NVRAM and SMC on the MacBook Pro, used it for almost a week with no problems waking/sleeping the machine. In the process, I had also completely uninstalled Fusion per the instructions on VMware's website (link).

I reinstalled Fusion Pro 8.1.1 one evening, ran it with Windows 10. When I finished using it, I shut down the VM altogether, and quit Fusion. When I woke my Mac the following morning, the black screen issue came back. The screen is on but black, I have to do a force restart to get it to come back up.

I contacted Fusion technical support and they want to collect logs but that's all, no fix or workaround except to wait-and-see if they can figure out what is wrong.

TBH, I'm ready to just boot camp, and dump this software. :smileyangry:

[JuanGuapo]

Update. I finally gave up and went to Boot Camp. The issue remains, even after resetting NVRAM and SMC, a clean install of OS X on a mid-2015 MacBook Pro (current model as of this writing) with Fusion 8.1.1. My MacBook Pro sleeps/wakes just fine since I stopped using Fusion, and ultimately removed it. Windows 10 runs fine on its own via Boot Camp, and with a PCIe SSD it boots Windows in less than 10sec.

So long, VMware.