ColoradoMarmot's Posts

I'm not sure what you're trying to do.  Fusion is for mac's (intel and M1).  Workstation is for Windows (intel only). You can't install workstation in any form on an M1 based Mac - there's no nested virtualization, and no intel CPU emulation. If you need to install windows on your mac, only Windows 11 ARM is supported, and that can be installed directly from the new menu in Fusion 13.5 (you'll need a license key, but it'll get the install media).

Fusion really wants VM's to live on APFS formatted drives these days.  exFAT can work, but it's not stable.  What's the format of the external drive?   FWIW, converted VM's are always bloated and buggy.  If you can build a clean one from scratch, you'll be better off in the long run.

Ok, that's actually not a 12 core machine.  It's a 6 core machine with hyperthreading (which don't count).  Drop the number of cores to 3 and see if that helps.  Modern OS's have gotten really greedy with cores. How much RAM is in the machine?  Make sure you leave at least 4GB for the host (more if you have other software running).

Windows XP has extremely rudimentary network printing support, and you're going to run into all sorts of SSL and certificate issues.  You're probably going to be better off printing to PDF in the guest, dragging to the host, and then printing the PDF from there. I believe (it's been 20+ years) you'll have to install a separate print to PDF capability.

Sure.  Two step process - first rename the bundle on disk with Fusion off.  When you start fusion, it'll be 'missing' in the library.  Delete the old entry, then drag/drop the renamed bundle from finder into the fusion library.  Then right click on the entry in the library and pick rename.

@iFrog wrote: I wanted to find out,  if right clicking on a VM in the Virtual Machine Library, and then holding option bypasses the encrypted  VMX file.  Since VMware Fusion stores the password so the VM can start.   Just a note - it's actually stored in the mac keychain, not in Fusion.

@gen843620 wrote: All our Macs run FileVault.    Good choice!   What are the security risks of running an unencrypted Windows 11 VM in a FileVault environment? Essentially none, since the files are encrypted on the host.  This is my recommendation - encryption on encryption is a substantial performance hit. FileVault protects against the risk of physical theft (along with our locked Mac Mini cage mounts).    The only risk I can imagine for an unencrypted Windows 11 VM in that environment is if a hacker or in-person rogue user gained access to the Mac side, then copied the VM over the internet or onto a flash drive. They'd be able to open the VM copy later and access the content.   Is that correct? Are there other security risks in that environment? Correct, but if they have that access to your machine, the can also get anything off the host, and you have much larger problems. All our TimeMachine backups are encrypted.    I've already decided to only switch to network bridge mode to print then switch back to NAT mode to keep any remote intruder in either system from using the network to access the other (especially any intruder in the Windows VM accessing anything on the LAN).   We don't web browse at all from the Windows side. If we need any a Windows program, we download it onto the Mac side then drag it over to the Windows VM or place it in a small VM-shared folder -- both rare.   It seems bridge mode is more of a security threat than an unencrypted VM in a macOS FileVault environment. What do you think? For secure networks, it's negligible.  For public networks, NAT provides an additional level of protection, in that the entire VM network stack is also behind the Mac firewall.  Regardless, make sure the windows firewall is on.  If you're in a data center environment, there really isn't a big difference between the two, unless you're worried about east/west movement through the VM's. I have to decide if I'm going to train users to switch back and forth between bridge mode and NAT. The switch in either direction takes 12 seconds on Intel Macs I've tested so far and doesn't require restarting Windows.   It's practical if users rarely print, which is our case. But I don't want to handle calls for print failure because someone forgot to switch to bridge mode, though a simple text reply would straighten them out. I'm probably going to leave them in bridge mode since they don't web browse from Windows and the risk of infection is very low. But I'm not thrilled with the risk of Windows and existing Windows programs probing the LAN. C'est la vie. One other option, similar to install, is to print to PDF in the VM, then drag/drop to the desktop and print from the mac.    

Except for the web browser cache, your local email cache, etc. I work in cybersecurity professionally, and can say with confidence that anyone who recommends against bitlocker/filevault is committing malpractice.   Good, encrypted, backups are equally critical.

Something is odd in your setup, or you have an intermittent hardware failure.  Fusion can put a heavy load on systems, so if there's flaky RAM that can cause this.  How old is the machine?  (and of course, if it's opencore, then all bets are off). I wouldn't count on any support of any kind for MacOS guests, especially on Intel - they're focused on getting Windows ARM support fully baked.

First, upgrade to Fusion 13.5, and manually reinstall VMWare tools from the menu.  If this VM was originally created with the first Tech Preview, you may have to rebuild one from scratch (I've had issues removing the manually installed video driver, but building a new VM fixed it). If the cad apps use OpenGL you're out of luck, that's not supported.

You had to enter a password to create a Windows 11 ARM VM, and optionally saved it to the keychain.    You can check keychain access to see if you saved it there. Time machine is unreliable to restore virtual machines, but there may be other workarounds if you can't find the password.

On a physical machine, bitlocker is critical - especially if it's a laptop.  Otherwise all your data is at risk when it's stolen.  Bonus is that when the drive fails, you don't have to resort to the same level of physical destruction as  you would with an unencrypted drive (that's why all my externals are encrypted - I got tired of drilling holes in the cases, bending plates, etc)..  Same is true with FileVault on Macs - turn it on. But I agree, in a VM, its superfluous - you're much better off just encrypting the underlying disk that the VM resides on (both for data loss, as well as for performance.