"Failed to power on"

[klinquist]

I've got two Macs. On one of them, VMWare Fusion works great - I had v10, 11, 11.5, and now 12.  

On my other Mac, I haven't been able to power on a VM since... Fusion 11?  I just get "Failed to power on (path)" on ANY VM when I hit the start/play button.

I upgraded to Big Sur and installed VMWare Player 12 (I own VMWare 11.x, trying Player before I pay for the upgrade to the full version of 12) and am experiencing the same issues.

I've tried the following:

Uninstalled, including removing all Library files & even kexts, reinstalling.

"Allowed" the kernel extension

Disabling SIP in combination with the above.

Making sure VMWare has all permissions in the Privacy tab of System Preferences. Removing and re-adding it to all permissions.

Trying new VMs.

Making sure all other hypervisors are completely removed (namely Docker).

Must be some conflict with something that was installed on this mac at one time!   I've been unable to find any relevant log files to give me more information.    I think I've tried everything found in other search results here in this forum!

Any ideas?

[SimonAZM]

Can you explain how to check the Group IP and how to change it?  I have the same issue and I have tried everything in this forum. So far I still have the same issue.

[scott28tt]

@SimonAZM 

Your problem is different, Fusion 12 cannot power on any VM on the M1 chip - browse or search this area for “M1”.

[DontWorri]

have you tried a safe boot?  hold down the left shift key during startup?

[SimonAZM]

Thank you for clarifying, It is a bit frustrating finding this. VMWare should rectify the promotion of Fusion in regards to Mac with M1 processors, they are selling an ultimate solution that actually doesn't work for new Mac computers.

[Mccxxiii]

Wanted to know if anyone has been able to get this working or of a workaround? 

[ColoradoMarmot]

No.  Fusion doesn't support ARM processors yet (they're working on it).  When it does, it's likely only to support ARM guests.

x86/64 guest support is a lot more difficult - either VMWare has to build an emulator (doubtful) or Apple has to open up Rosetta2 for hypervisor use (maybe, but probably not until the next OS version IMHO).  Your best bet for Windows workloads is going to be running windows arm with it's own x86 emulation built in...but that's not fully baked yet, may not work for advanced workloads, and isn't available as a retail license.

Net: if you need intel workloads, stick with an Intel mac until/unless something changes.

[torchredfrc]

@zhaokaiy I'm having the same issue. Here is my output from the id commands and none of my vm packages contain logs from today when I'm trying to start the vm's. This is all happening post Big Sur upgrade w/ VMware Fusion 12. Unfortunately I'm outside the 30 day support after my purchase of the license so I can't get support through the web site. Guess I should have spent more time trying to get this going after purchasing the license.

mkane@Matts-Mac-Pro ~ % id

uid=501(mkane) gid=20(staff) groups=20(staff),12(everyone),61(localaccounts),79(_appserverusr),80(admin),81(_appserveradm),98(_lpadmin),501(access_bpf),33(_appstore),100(_lpoperator),204(_developer),250(_analyticsusers),395(com.apple.access_ftp),398(com.apple.access_screensharing),399(com.apple.access_ssh),400(com.apple.access_remote_ae),701(com.apple.sharepoint.group.1)

mkane@Matts-Mac-Pro ~ % id -g

20

mkane@Matts-Mac-Pro ~ % dscl . -list /Users PrimaryGroupID | grep 20

_coreaudiod              202

_devicemgr               220

_locationd               205

_screensaver             203

_softwareupdate          200

_trustevaluationagent    208

mkane                    20

mkane@Matts-Mac-Pro ~ % 

It is worth noting that this happens with any VM, new or old. I tried configuring a new Ubuntu and Windows VM as well as just starting some VM's that worked prior to updating. All give the same "Failed to power on" error. This includes trying to start them from there terminal with vmrun. I have tried with "Disable Side Channel Mitigations" enabled and disabled with no success and completely removed VMware Fusion from my system then reinstalled (manual instructions from here https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1017838). Looking for any help as I need these virtual machines for some work in the very near future. Thanks!

[Laszlo-Kiss]

I just started having this same issue, just a couple of weeks ago. My VMs are unable to power up, those that have been paused can't be resumed.

Any actual solution for this? Re-installed on top of existing install, had no effect. Perfectly working VM from a week ago, can't power up...

I'm running VMware 11.5.7, 18.7.0 Darwin (MacOS Mojave 10.14.6)

[Laszlo-Kiss]

It looks like that a hard power off and power on cycle of my workstation fixed the problem... Odd.