RDPetruska's Posts

The trial version (and/or the free personal player version) should both be able to open existing VMs - whether created with Fusion or Workstation.  What is the VM?  And are all the files present in it's folder?

Your existing virtual machines *should* work with a newer version of Fusion.  One caveat is that if your Mac is a newer Apple-silicon based one, then none of your virtual machines created with an Intel-silicon based one will work.

We'd need the vmware.log, not the sandbox one. It looks like all the pieces of the initial disk are there (Win10 Pro x64-cl3.*).  But only the descriptor file of the second disk.  Do you have snapshots?  If so, show a screenshot of the snapshot manager.  

Pretty sure the product key is stored on the hard disk, not on/in the motherboard.  So your issue is accessing the contents of the virtual hard disk. Post the vmware.log file and a listing of the files in the VM's folder - including dates and sizes.

I've personally never understood the feature there.  Half the time it doesn't work, and then the user is stuck, not knowing where the downloaded file is to attempt to retry.  Just go to VMware's site and download the desired installer version you want.  And run it.

@robednz wrote: hi can anyone tell me if player 16.5 will run under windows11 as the host and winxp as the virtual machine ? can't upgrade to player 17 as they have removed virtual printing You *can* upgrade to 17.  Just don't go any higher than 17.0.2.  They removed the virtual printing in 17.5.

@Thecoolfridge wrote: What are some instances that it need administrator like partitioning a separate drive? Because unlike a word processor or other simple application, a virtualization engine requires many system-level components installed and running in order to create a computer completely from software.  Even as Paul said there *might* be a VERY old version which did not require Administrative privileges, I highly doubt it - Workstation has ALWAYS had some system-level components which need to be installed in system-controlled areas of the OS - and Fusion is running very much the same.  So no, you will not find a portable App style version of a virtualization engine.  Possibly an emulation software, but definitely not virtualization software.

@dwknoble wrote: I'm having the same problem.  My i7-900 processor was purchased in 2011, but does not support XSAVE.  I now have an expensive Vmware Workstation 17 which is absolutely useless to me.  No more VMware for me.  I am now a former customer. Well, you can still run 17.0.2 - so it's not expensive and absolutely useless...

Well, right in the paragraph you posted is the statement "on each Mac computer that you own or control" - there it is in black and white.  They do not allow their software to run on non-Apple hardware!  And, the only way to make Workstation for Windows/Linux load an Apple OS-based VM is to illegally hack/modify the software!  If you want to run an Apple OS in a virtual environment on an Apple computer, there is ALREADY a product which allows this - Fusion!

By default, the guest OS will see an SVGA video adapter, and use its own built-in driver.  The VMware Tools (for Linux guests, now use the open-vm-tools and open-vm-desktop-tools (I think those are the package names) which include the driver for the VMware emulated video adapter, and will allow additional screen resolutions and resizing.

Create a new VM.  Use "Custom" path in the Wizard, not "Standard".  Select a Linux guest OS that's close to what you run.  After going through the options, before powering on, tweak the virtual hardware - no need for hard disk, specify any particular network adapters, serial ports, etc.  Attach the USB stick and power on.  Click mouse inside the window as it boots, adn hopefuly a boot menu will come up .

So how about creating a VM with all the settings needed for that OS, including a blank hard disk.  Then boot the VM with the USB stick connected, and boot from it.  Then go through any install steps exactly the same as you would if you put the USB stick into a physical computer that you wanted to install the OS onto.