VMware cannot setup Boot Camp drive

[haralds]

I manually set up BootCamp on a separate disk and it is working fine under Windows 10. It needs BIOS boot on a Mac Pro 5,1 and has been set up as GUID with hybrid MBR.

/dev/disk9 (external, physical):

   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER

   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *2.0 TB     disk9

   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk9s1

   2:       Microsoft Basic Data Windows 10              2.0 TB     disk9s2

PT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.5

Type device filename, or press <Enter> to exit: /dev/disk9

Warning: Devices opened with shared lock will not have their

partition table automatically reloaded!

Partition table scan:

  MBR: hybrid

  BSD: not present

  APM: not present

  GPT: present

Disk /dev/disk9: 3907029168 sectors, 1.8 TiB

Sector size (logical): 512 bytes

Disk identifier (GUID): 461461B7-1641-4C0B-9EA5-3C47ADC1E86B

Partition table holds up to 128 entries

Main partition table begins at sector 2 and ends at sector 33

First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 3907029134

Partitions will be aligned on 8-sector boundaries

Total free space is 264301 sectors (129.1 MiB)

Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name

   1              40          409639   200.0 MiB   EF00  EFI System Partition

   2          411648      3906766847   1.8 TiB     0700 

When I create a VMDsk descriptor file manually and try to boot I get the error:  A fault has occurred causing a virtual CPU to enter the shutdown state.

# Disk DescriptorFile

version=6

encoding="UTF-8"

CID=fffffffe

parentCID=ffffffff

createType="fullDevice"

# Extent description

RW 3906355200 FLAT "/dev/disk10s2" 0 partitionUUID @partition:diskModel=CT2000MX500SSD1,diskSize=2000398934016,partSize=2000053862400,partOffset=210763776,partMediaUUID=B959ACA5-F94E-45BE-864E-B7E633CFBA41,partVolumeUUID=7485C9BE-097F-4610-9563-396D0E09954B

# The Disk Data Base

#DDB

ddb.adapterType = "ide"

ddb.geometry.cylinders = "0"

ddb.geometry.heads = "0"

ddb.geometry.sectors = "0"

ddb.longContentID = "03d4314df7bfeb3fb017c28bfffffffe"

ddb.physicalSectorSize = "4096"

ddb.uuid = "60 00 C2 95 4f a1 47 79-86 c4 ac 9a 8b b1 96 07"

ddb.virtualHWVersion = "14"

The KB advises to erase the BootCamp and start over. I'd rather not. Any ideas on how to make it work?

[haralds]

Following the knowledge base I backed up Windows via Winclone, wiped the drive and installed an OS partition. I then used BootCamp to create the BootCamp partition.

That boots but creating BootCamp still fails!

[haralds · Accepted solution]

My fix: install the older VMware v10.1.3 under High Sierra.

Folks, this is a serious and embarrassing bug. I have wasted probably 10 hours on this. I have been a user of VMWare product since the beta Workstation 1!

This is really disappointing.

[ColoradoMarmot]

Not sure I understand - Fusion requires a boot camp that's been built using the Apple tools.  Sounds like you've done something more one-off/custom?

[Mikero]

I think the error message was saying to trash the BootCamp VM, not the partition itself.

That would just prompt Fusion to re-examine the disk and try to set up BC-as-a-VM.