All VMs Start with Black Screen - Page 2

TomFilliman · ‎08-07-2013

Recently moved all my VMs from Host Win7-64bit to Win8-64bit.

Fresh install of Player v 5.0.2 build-1031769

Computer is Acer Aspire M Intel i5 @ 1.8Ghz

Graphics is Intel HD 4000

When any of the various VMs are started from the Powered Off state, the player window will open and a big black screen will appear where the guest display should be shown. The guest OS does indeed boot, right up to the login screen although with no display visible. If I try to click on the close button in the upper right corner, I get a dialog box that says "The Virtual Machine is Busy". My only option is to end the vmplayer.exe task using task manager. Once I do that, the VM shows state as Powered On in the Library. If I Play it the 2nd time, the VM will resume operating correctly with the proper display at the immediate point where I expected it to be when I ended the vmplayer.exe task earlier.

Presence or absence of Tools in Guest does not affect the problem.

All 3 of my VMs have the exact same behavior. Guest operating Systems are: WinXP-SP3-32bit, Win7-64bit built from the VMware Converter, and Server 2008 from the MS eval ISO.

Any ideas? Once the play/end task/play sequence is performed the VM works correctly. Until it is shutdown or hibernated. A VM restart does not exhibit this symptom. The problem is reproducible with all VMs every time.

Provided vmx for the XP VM and a few logs.

Thanks in advance. I'm so close to having this work it's even more frustrating than if it didn't work at all.

qwerty12341 · ‎01-27-2021

This totally works. Todays date is 27th Jan 2021. You wrote this post 6 years and 3 months ago and this bug still exists. Thanks VMWare for quality software!

dallasray · ‎06-26-2021

I'm still frustrated about it too. For me, it only happens when I install a Linux OS without a desktop. The floppy disk trick works for me, so thanks for saving me the headache of spending time on it!

danallenhtn · ‎01-17-2024

After having this problem for a few years, and living with it be using ssh to interact with my Linux VMs, I finally found the easy, free fix to the problem, the blank VMWare Fusion console screens that started when I upgraded to Catalina but kept my VMWare Fusion v10.

The first step can be tricky, but I had the good fortune of not having to do it

STEP 1 - Disable System Integrity Protection (SIP) In my case, SIP always is disabled, because it is part of my rig running Catalina on 2012 Cheese Grater MacPro. I had to use a sort of hackintosh software to get Catalina running. It leaves SIP off, because if it is on, the hack won't work. To apply this fix to the always blank screens in VMWare Fusion, SIP has to be off. Check your SIP status by runnng this at in the terminal app:

csrutil status

If SIP is on, the response will be

If SIP is on – “System Integrity Protection status: enabled.”

Turning it off can be harrowing, because the Mac has to be started in Recovery mode. Depending on the model Mac, starting in Recovery Mode can be an adventure. Instead of getting into all the possible agony that can make reaching recovery mode an unpleasant activity, I'll just say if SIP is enabled, starting in recovery mode is required to turn it off, which is needed for this fix to work. Start in recovery mode, turn off SIP, restart the computer, and you are just about home free on the fix.

STEP 2 - BACKUP THE DATABASE THAT YOU WILL BE CHANGING IN A MINUTE

The cause of the blank screens is Catalina has settings in a SQLLite database that do not exist for previous versions of MacOS Fusion 10 came out before Catalina, so it does not apply the settings it needs in Catalina. So, the fix, is to delete the existing settings, and put in new ones. This is all done at the command lined, using the SQL provided below. You can make a copy of the database before making the changes.

Make a copy of the settings database. The settings database is a SQLLite file as thus:

DIRECTORY

/Library/Application Support/com.apple.TCC

DATABASE FILE (FULL PATH)

/Library/Application Support/com.apple.TCC/TCC.db

Copy that file to your home directory in case you have to roll back the fix. Here is the command for that, with slash inserted for the space, which is needed

 cp /Library/Application\ Support/com.apple.TCC/TCC.db ~/

STEP 3- FIX THE BLANK SCREENS BY RUNNING A FEW LINES OF CODE TO UPDATE SETTINGS STORED IN THE DATABASE YOU JUST BACKED UP

Run all these command and your VMWare blank screens will be an artifact of your past. Make sure VMware Fusion is shut down when you do this. It might not matter. Up to you if you are not worried about what I see as potential carnage.

Now that VMWare Fusion is off, here the the commands. VMWare will be fixed immediately when these have run. Each command takes less than 1/1000th of a second to run. Here they are:

tccutil reset All com.vmware.fusion   -- removes the settings that your about to recreate

sudo sudo sqlite3 "/Library/Application Support/com.apple.TCC/TCC.db" 'insert into access values ("kTCCServiceScreenCapture", "com.vmware.fusion", 0, 1, 1, "", "", "", "UNUSED", "", 0,1565595574)'

sudo sqlite3 "/Library/Application Support/com.apple.TCC/TCC.db" 'insert into access values ("kTCCServiceListenEvent", "com.vmware.fusion", 0, 1, 1, "", "", "", "UNUSED", "", 0,1565595574)'

sudo sqlite3 "/Library/Application Support/com.apple.TCC/TCC.db" 'insert into access values ("kTCCServicePostEvent", "com.vmware.fusion", 0, 1, 1, "", "", "", "UNUSED", "", 0,1565595574)'

STEP 4 - ENJOY YOUR LIFE WHICH NOW IS FREE OF BLANK VMWARE SCREENS GO AHEAD AND START A VM IN FUSIONS AND YOU WILL SEE.

STEP 5- RESTART IN RECOVERY MODE TO REENABLE SIP IF SIP WAS WORKING BEFORE STARTING THIS CHANGE

The end.

Technogeezer · ‎01-22-2024

@danallenhtn wrote:
After having this problem for a few years, and living with it be using ssh to interact with my Linux VMs, I finally found the easy, free fix to the problem, the blank VMWare Fusion console screens that started when I upgraded to Catalina but kept my VMWare Fusion v10.

This is a totally out-of context solution for the problem in this thread. The issue in this thread is present in Workstation on Windows hosts and has nothing to do with macOS.

Your particular problem that your macOS hack is fixing for you may be due to running an unsupported configuration, Catalina probably changed security permissions required for certain activities. My guess is that Fusion 10 has no idea that it needed to set them because VMware never tested or wrote Fusion 10 for Catalina. Any changes needed for Fusion to support Catalina and its newer security model went into 11.5 and later. Your hack is adding these permissions manually,

Did you by any chance run a query against that TCC database to find out what (or if) those records were set to before you hacked them?

My advice would be to try running a supported Fusion version on Catalina (Fusion 11.5 through Fusion 12.1.2) before seeing if this hack is required.

- Paul (Technogeezer)
Editor of the Unofficial Fusion Companion Guides

reilogix · ‎03-23-2024

Over 10 years later!!!(TomFilliman ’s trick from

‎11-27-2013 06:08 PM worked for me on VMware Workstation 17 Pro (v17.5.1) on a fully-patched Windows Server 2022 host. Only recently did the issue even start, but thanks to your fix, it’s gone! Some interesting notes about by my issue: it affected all VM’s, even Linux; I simply could not see the screen although I could remote in to each VM via RDP, Splashtop, etc; The little preview / peek window did show the proper VM but I could not interact with it. Thanks to your fix, I am back in business. I can’t use autostart-VM’s anymore, but I can live with that on this workflow. Thank you!!!