What to do when a VM goes gray?

[licensedtoquill]

I have an elderly version of Fusion on my son's computer, principally because he never uses Windows. I very occasionally do on his computer when I cant use mine

It is 4.1.4 and I just got a message and upgraded to the newest version of Mavericks. When I went into the VM, it gave me the "just upgraded XP automatically and Restarted" message and the network adapter wouldnt work in either of the three settings (it was set by default to NAT).  Then the VM started giving the error message Cant Go Into Unity Mode (I didnt think  I was going into unity mode at the time!)

Then on reboot, it told me of the release of 6 and still wouldn't connect to the internet (without a connection, how did it know!)

So when I tried to go into network settings, the whole VM crashed, which is unusual, the whole VM is grayed out and none of the VMWare menu items such as SEND Cntrl-Alt-Del will work, all are grayed out.  Except Key and all the keys are themselves grayed out.  Holding down the Option key changes the menu but almost everything is still grayed out.

Can  I close down this VM and is it likely ever to work again on this Macbook please?

[Coach300]

You got your alert about Fusion 6 from your Mac's internet connection, from the running Fusion 4. While the VM may not connect to the internet, if the Mac can connect, that OS is what's running Fusion, and thus can tell you.

For internet connections, you may have to opt for Bridged networking (share the Mac's connection instead of having the VM be a separate "machine" on the network.

I can't say for certain if Fusion 4 will continue to work in Mavericks. I know that Fusion 5 worked okay, but Mavericks is really overtaking things. How old is the MacBook? My mid-2010 MBP ran Fusion 3, 4, 5, 6, upgrading the MacOS X each time as available, but also Fusion every time a new version came out. For  awhile, Fusion 5 was working better in Mavericks than 6 but there was a release 6.0.2 which helped quite a bit (not everything).

In Mavericks, there is the "Prevent App Nap" option. Highlight the application icon in the Finder, choose "Get Info" (File menu), or command-I, or right-click and find it there. You can check this box to attempt to get Mavericks to "behave". But its core technologies are built around improving battery life, although it does it better on the newer Macs than the older ones...same for Fusion, it would seem.

[WoodyZ]

If you're unable to properly shutdown the Virtual Machine then you could try to use vmrun to shut it down otherwise you'll need to terminate the vmware-vmx process in Activity Monitor.  Note that this does have the potential to corrupt the Virtual Machine however if it cannot be shutdown by the GUI or using vmrun then you really don't have any other choice.

VMware Fusion 6 is the only officially supported version under OS X 10.9 Mavericks.  There are a couple of threads where Users are still using versions 4 and 5 under under OS X 10.9 Mavericks however some Users are experiencing issues with them (and 6 too).

[licensedtoquill]

There's no prevent app nap in applications??

I am afraid to just close the computer or force close because it usually just suspends the VM and as i said, option doesnt let me force quit

[licensedtoquill]

Thank you for that but how do you use vmrun to shut it down?  Is this a terminal command?

[WoodyZ · Accepted solution]

Yes in a Terminal use the following syntax:

/Applications/VMware\ Fusion.app/Contents/Library/vmrun -T fusion stop vmname.vmx

Where vmname.vmx is the fully qualified pathname to the Virtual Machine's .vmx configuration file.  Have a look at:  Work with Virtual Machine Packages

Open the Virtual Machine Package in Finder and then drag and drop the .vmx configuration file onto the Terminal window after copying and pasting the command show above up to and including the space after stop.

Message was edited by: WoodyZ - Originally posted, Dec 22, 2013 12:57 AM.

[Coach300]

There is no "App Nap" application. It's a core technology in Mavericks, one of several in fact, that may be playing with the ability for Fusion to run smoothly on older Macs. App Nap is the only core technology, however, that can be "turned off":

In the Finder, locate the VMWare Fusion application icon in your Applications folder. Highlight it (click once). Hit command-I, or go File>Get Info, or right-click the icon and find "Get Info". Once that info window is open, you should see "Prevent AppNap" as a checkable box. Check that box, then relaunch Fusion.

[licensedtoquill]

Thanks Woody, that did it immediately and I am now out of the problem.

Unfortunately I tried to see if Mavericks has screwed up everything with Fusion and it seems it has: I don't dare touch the XP VM but I did try to run a Mint 13 vm to see precisely how much doesn't work and the answer is: quite a lot.  Haven't tried to uninstall tools yet to see if re-installing fixes anything.

Firstly, as we all seem to know, networking isn't working, Secondly (I got about this far) you cant go into settings (remember, the VM went grey when I tried to go into network settings). Now the linux VM crashes when I go into any setting (by that I mean hitting the spanner at the top once you have figured out how to get out of the now-automatic unity mode).

Thirdly, curiously that terminal command doesn't necessarily work all the time either!  I have Terminal still up on the screen and can repeat the command, substituting (dragging and dropping) the mint vmx file for the xp one. But this time it doesn't shut down the VM. Instad it gives the error message "error cannot open VM. unknown file suffix" (after I have checked prevent appnap in GetInfo)

[licensedtoquill]

(sorry for that last posting, the command did in fact close the VM, it just hung on the screen so it didnt look closed until I clicked on it  When I entered the command again, it returned the error message vm not found because indeed the last command had closed it)

[licensedtoquill]

Actually things arent as disastrous as I first mentioned: Here is the story so far (on this 2009 MacBook touchpad model)

I shut down the computer and ran a complete diskwarrior node check and file system check, which hadn't been done on this computer for a few months

Suddenly everything seems to be working OK in Fusion!

So, obviously applying the maxim 'if it ain't broke now, you can still try to fix it', I uninstalled VMWare tools to reinstall them. During the process add/remove programs crashed with supposedly 59 seconds remaining on the uninstall.  Along the way I started to get warning messages such as "SCSI bus hardware re-install has completed, restart computer to finish{ and 'if you carry on like this, don't expect your keyboard ports to work properly' (I am paraphrasing with this one). I would imagine the uninstall app which says it didnt complete did in fact complete and a few more restarts and reinstalls of tools should get this unit up and running

i have a strong suspicion that if I can straighten out whatever I have screwed up, things  may well start to work properly on this computer!!