This is a 27" iMac from 2020.  Intel i5.  Fully supported by Apple for Sonoma.  There is no OLPC.  Thanks for the help. 

Which - I just noticed now - was mentioned in your opening post which I managed to miss.

Other things to try are seeing if it makes a difference to turn off side channel mitigations.
See if other VM's will start. In case you have those, if not then try creating a new VM and see if it will boot.

--
Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva

I tried all of that. I created a new Windows 11 x64 , it did not work. I turned off the side channel mitigations, that did not work. 

I think something the Fusion is not able to connected to a Sonoma driver and it just shuts down. I'm no expert in VMware so take that with a grain of salt. 

I also tried to change the boot from EFI to BIOS, that did not work.  

I copied an old Windows 10 VM I had not used in about a year and that was a worse disaster. VMware could not update or upgrade it and it failed differently then my Window 11 VM. 

I'm on a Macbook Pro Max M2 2023 using VMware Fusion Tech Preview Player Version e.x.p (22068932)

I'm not sure if I have the same problem or if it's a similar one but it also occurred after updating to Sonoma. In my case in the Virtual Machine Library, I see Windows 11 starting correctly, but the virtual machine does not appear, so I cannot interact with it. I have another virtual machine but linux Ubuntu and it boots fine, I don't have any problems with Linux.

I'm new reporting VMWare Fusion issues so I don't know what information is needed and where is it located to get help.

Thanks.

One interim step before a reinstall of Sonoma is to create a new user account, and then run Fusion from there.

The step after that is an overlay install (reinstall Sonoma over the existing installation).

Last idea - the VM must be on an APFS or HFS+ formatted drive, so if it's on an external drive with exFAT, or especially if there's an NTFS driver involved, it won't work.

Hi,

Interesting.

Not something I would have come up with myself. I wonder if this is a new issue for Sonoma.
Glad to hear that the issue is resolved and thanks for letting us know what resolved the problem.

--
Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva

@rvittori  that was a good piece of detective work. I enabled Full Keyboard Access on Sonoma and now no VM that I have running under the 2023 Tech Preview will start. Disabling Full Keyboard Access as you did enabled the VMs to boot.

I'm going to drop a message to VMware's beta team as I can reproduce this on Sonoma and the Tech Preview.

after I updated my MAC M2 to MAC OS 14 (Sonoma), my VMware fusion 13 doesn't work, then I uninstall it. I tried to install again the same VMware Fusion pro 13 version, I double-click to install, but just one second after prompting out the initializing windon then the windon close automatically. I found the icon showed blocked in my Applications, I tried to open it ,it told me that "You can't open the application "VMware Fusion" because it may be damaged or incomplete"

Have you checked the macOS System Settings > Accessibilty > Keyboard > Full Keyboard Access to see if it's enabled?

Also, if you are getting that message and the icon is blocked, you have a broken application.

Use the information in KB article https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1017838 to fully uninstall Fusion. You can't just drag the Fusion application to the trash to get rid of all remnants of Fusion. Use the script here https://communities.vmware.com/t5/VMware-Fusion-Documents/Script-to-check-if-all-remnants-of-VMware-... to help you make sure you got all the remnants (the script automates finding the files in the KB article).

Then reboot your Mac to safe mode https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/start-up-your-mac-in-safe-mode-mh21245/mac . Once you've done that, restart your Mac and let it boot normally.

Is this a totally clean macOS installation or do you have any other third party software installed on it?

I get this error message "You can't open the application "VMware Fusion" because it may be damaged or incomplete" , any solution?

I was able to fix this error You can’t open the application “VMware Fusion Tech Preview” because it may be damaged or incomplete.

I copied the app to application folder and installed it from there

Does this still occur with Fusion 13.5? That’s the first released version supported on Sonoma.

New installations of the 2023 Tech Preview should not be happening since the release of Fusion 13.5, and if you’re running it, you should be moving off of it sooner rather than later. . The Tech Previews are beta software and the beta is over. No help is available for beta software.