Coach300's Posts

In Preferences (command  - ,) in the Keyboard & Mouse pane, there are a number of options. You might be able to customize this in the "Key Mappings" tab. However, there may be no similar mapping in Windows (or the Windows app). But if you know what Windows key combination does what you desire, and have a specific Mac key combination in mind, you may be able to set that hitting the "+" key at the bottom. Note that, since Windows apps are not always created similarly, the combination you select may not map correctly in other Windows apps. But this should at least be a start for you. Some mappings already exist, as Command - Z, -X, -C, -V are mapped to what Windows' apps commonly use (undo, cut, copy, paste). And Command-W is mapped to Alt-F4 (close window). But again, there needs to be an existing key combination you can map the Mac command to.

You mention the word "years" of using Fusion...several years on the same computer? Migrating to Mavericks when going to Fusion 6 at the same time? I had numerous issues with a 2010 MBP running Win7 Guest after doing those same upgrades (previous upgrades from Fusion 3 and 4, plus other upgrades to OS X, no issues). I did improve things by doing "Prevent App Nap" (Finder icon for Fusion, Get Info), removing all shared folders, and also reducing the memory and processors assigned to the VM. Previously, I allocated 2048 MB of my 4 GB as well as 2 of 4 processor cores to the guest, but once running in Mavericks/Fusion 6, I went down to 1024MB and 1 processor core for the guest, and things improved dramatically. I did since get a new MBP and things are amazingly faster, but the above is strictly as things were configured on my older Mac.

Curious about a couple things here: What host OS are you using, and did you upgrade from Mountain Lion (or earlier) to Mavericks at the same or similar time as you did from Fusion 5 to 6? And, 'Start Screen": Do you or are you using Fusion in Full Screen or Single Window mode? Full Screen mode will always be full screen, but Single Window may behave differently due to the OS (Mac) in use.

I previously did such a thing and had no success with network connections when I created a VM out of a working Vista PC. My solution was to create a new VM with a fresh install of that OS (for which I did have an unused license). I populated the VM with only those applications actually needed and ported all of the doucments, photos, e-mails, etc. into the VM from the PC and that connected fine. I found I couldn't network in either a PC (Win 8.1 running VMWare Player) nor a Mac (Fusion 6. on Mavericks) with the directly created VM, but the one I created from scratch worked just fine. I think that it was a better install, at that, as there was no bloatware on that VM, either. I was never prompted to activate Windows on that VM...perhaps because it was Vista as old as it is. I cannot say if that would be encountered using Windows 7.

Disclaimer: I am using Fusion 6 so the steps I am using, which may be identical in 5 as those in place for 6, may not be necessarily identical (although I haven't noticed any real menu item differences). What I've done was bring up the USB settings for the VM (Virtual Machine Menu > Settings… item) and click on the USB & Bluetooth pane. If the printer is already powered on and is recognized by the Mac, unplug it for ten seconds, then reconnect it and see if you get the dialog asking you which operating system to connect that printer. If the printer connects to the Mac only and you don't get that dialog, refer to the above USB & Bluetooth pane. I have seen printers connected to the machine listed and have clicked on the checkbox to the left of the printer and forced Fusion to connect the printer to Windows. The above dialog has the option "remember this setting and do not ask again" (paraphrased). Never check that one for a printer that will see service on both your guest OS and OS X. If you checked that box one time, the checkbook in the USB & Bluetooth pane could get past that and allow you to connect that printer to the OS on demand.

Notwithstanding any issues relating to licensing of guest OSs.... I have no experience with running a VM off an external drive, so I am only offering suggestions based on what "stands to reason" in my mind. You might do best on an external USB hard drive, like one you might use for a Time Machine backup. Put the VM on the external, and then launch it by double-clicking the VM (navigate in the Finder). You might have to, every time you launch it on a different Mac, tell Fusion that "I moved it" when prompted. There was a time when I would start up my Mac (going back to Leopard) using an external while at home, and the internal drive when away (at the time, I ran Fusion on the internal drive only). So external drives do work, at least to boot the Mac using the external instead of the internal. I have no stock in them, but you may do well with a Western Digital external drive. Purchase one with the USB that matches the lowest USB setup among the Macs you will use (that is, if they all use USB 3, you can opt for that and enjoy the speed...but if one or more are USB 2.0, you would have to drop to 2.0). Some drives would be able to using either 3 or 2 depending on the Mac, however. Such a drive weighs only a couple pounds. Those that are solid state would be the most durable and lightest, but would be more costly...but you may find that a key benefit of a SSD (such as WD My Passport for Mac) is that they are bus-powered and thus won't need a power adaptor, as you might be with a traditional "platter" external hard drive.

I would further recommend that, if you find yourself doing a force shutdown of a guest VM, that you restart the guest VM in 'safe mode' and do a proper shut down after that, which will help stabilize things. Then, when properly shut down, do any Fusion adjustments.

I'm guessing that Fusion launches okay but the VM does not? Go to your documents folder to look for the VM:  users:<user>:documents:virtual machines and see if the file exists. Try double-clicking that file to launch (it should have the long suffix of .vmwarevm).

On your Mac OS X, did you skip from Lion (10.7) to Mavericks (10.9)? I don't recall there being keyboard shortcut for Spaces (Desktops) since at least Mountain Lion. But if your Mac handles some multi-finger gestures, you can swipe left or right with 4 fingers (possibly customizable to 3 fingers in System Preferences) between Spaces. Personally, I never used Spaces until Mountain Lion, at which time Full Screen Apps became a norm. Also note that previously, one could arrange a grid of Spaces any format up to, I believe, 4 x 4, but they are now simply in a single line and thus a swipe can move between them. When any Mac app is in Full Screen, that full screen is a Space unto itself and the same would apply to a full screen setting for a VM. I have noted some Spaces to change positions in the row. To view all Spaces, swipe upward with four fingers to show them all (Mission Control) running across the top of the screen, and a left or right four finger swipe can therein change Spaces and show all windows/apps allocated to that particular Space and one can also drag whole Apps (drag the app icon) and individual windows (drag any part of a desired window) from the current Space to another one. Once you're using the multi-finger gesture to navigate between Spaces, you shouldn't miss the command key to do the same. Message was edited by: Coach300 to include the phrase "Mission Control".

One additional tip, if you don't already use it: Mission Control/Mouse Gesture four finger left or right swipe will move between Mac Spaces, which will move the Win8.1 completely off the screen in an instant, or back onto it. The Dock will hide itself in full screen Win8.1 but come back into view, if hiding is turned off, on the other Spaces. Four finger swipe up, to display Mission Control, will show your Win8.1 desktop as its own space next to the other(s) running on your Mac.

Reading this in its entirety, this is a Boot Camp partition of Windows 7 that you are using in Fusion? I ask that right away because I didn't initially detect that your post was about a Boot Camp situation. I'm aware of the "Read everything before doing anything" exercise, although it would have been helpful to have known that up front. Did you have this working fine in Fusion before upgrading to Mavericks, if you did that? Reading your post, you mention using Fusion 6.0.2 since June (although .02 wasn't available until much later) so you might still be on Mountain Lion or older. You might need to reinstall VMWare Tools. Note that you may need to delete the Tools first, which will result in some difficulties and hangs, but once reinstalled, may very well be beneficial. Since I don't use a Boot Camp environment, I can't say if you can do this work within a Boot Camp startup, but it may be possible.

I can't understand why one wouldn't use the shut down process throughthe Windows 7 start button to properly shut down a VM prior to quitting Fusion. On my older Mac, I would suspend the VM but on my very new i7 MBP, startup is so quick that I do a full shut down as described above, and then hit Command-Q to end Fusion. Perhaps Fusion has commands that will effect a shutdown, but I don't trust them.

The below is an English translation. While I studied French 30 years ago, I still needed to use the Dashboard widget to help, though my understanding of the language did fix a few things the computer translator could not correctly do. «Voilà l’inquirie de belin113 en anglais...j’étudié français il y a 30 ans mais j’ai du utiliser le widget en <Dashboard>». Since an update of vmware (now version 6.0,  had vmware fusion 5), my access to Windows by the means of the boot camp partition is blocked. The message given by vmware is the following: move the virtual machine Boot Camp to the Trash and “to carry out Boot camp” to recreate it. That will not affect the applications or the Windows data on your Boot Camp partition. (translated: This might mean that he's being told to boot directly from the boot camp partition—this parenthetical comment is mine) Then another window of vmware: VMware Fusion met an error and stopped Windows. Click on Redémarrer (restart) Windows to start again Windows. Click on Rapport (Report) to collect the data and to ask a support VMware. Then last window: impossible to find a process even valid to which to connect itself Somebody could help me pleassssssssse thank you in advance N.B. I am thinking of putting wmware into the Trash and of the retelecharger (re-downloading?) via the site of vmware…

I tried creating a VM out of a Vista tower using free VMWare vCenter Converter Standalone  to do it and it was a successful VM, with one exception: I could not get the VM to recognize an internet connection, and I tried that both on a Windows 8 machine running free VMWare Player as well as on a new MBP running Fusion 6, Mavericks. Neither worked. But I still had a license from an older Boot Camp installation of Vista and, while I didn't have a working DVD drive, I was able to download and create an .ISO...basically, I created a new VM with a new install of Vista and simply imported documents onto it from the old Vista tower as well as downloaded/installed applications as needed/desired. It may be a few more steps, but it may get you to "a" solution (maybe not "the" solution you wanted) more quickly. I found that I was able to get the desired networking working in both a Fusion (Mac) and VMWare Player (Win8) environments. You will need to address Vista licensing, of course. If you need help locating downloads to create a Vista .ISO (it takes a few steps as it comes in three files and requires a third app to create the .ISO in Windows), I can help. Thanks to WoodyZ for the help in getting me started on that Vista project. Message was edited by: Coach300 regarding licensing.

There is no "App Nap" application. It's a core technology in Mavericks, one of several in fact, that may be playing with the ability for Fusion to run smoothly on older Macs. App Nap is the only core technology, however, that can be "turned off": In the Finder, locate the VMWare Fusion application icon in your Applications folder. Highlight it (click once). Hit command-I, or go File>Get Info, or right-click the icon and find "Get Info". Once that info window is open, you should see "Prevent AppNap" as a checkable box. Check that box, then relaunch Fusion.

You got your alert about Fusion 6 from your Mac's internet connection, from the running Fusion 4. While the VM may not connect to the internet, if the Mac can connect, that OS is what's running Fusion, and thus can tell you. For internet connections, you may have to opt for Bridged networking (share the Mac's connection instead of having the VM be a separate "machine" on the network. I can't say for certain if Fusion 4 will continue to work in Mavericks. I know that Fusion 5 worked okay, but Mavericks is really overtaking things. How old is the MacBook? My mid-2010 MBP ran Fusion 3, 4, 5, 6, upgrading the MacOS X each time as available, but also Fusion every time a new version came out. For  awhile, Fusion 5 was working better in Mavericks than 6 but there was a release 6.0.2 which helped quite a bit (not everything). In Mavericks, there is the "Prevent App Nap" option. Highlight the application icon in the Finder, choose "Get Info" (File menu), or command-I, or right-click and find it there. You can check this box to attempt to get Mavericks to "behave". But its core technologies are built around improving battery life, although it does it better on the newer Macs than the older ones...same for Fusion, it would seem.

I don't easily decipher code like that, but to those that can, it is valuable. My questions are: Does this happen when Fusion 6 is first launched? or when you first attempt to open a VM? Have you tried re-installing Fusion?

Sorry about that misunderstanding! I have to admit, when seeing the 10.7 and 10.9 numbers out there, I don't as easily discern there to be a legacy MacOS and am scratching my head, thinking of Windows (or other non-Mac) guests. In my mind I'd be looking to read "Lion" running as a guest in "Mavericks" but there is no requirement to use such terminology, as numerically you were correct, and that's all that's all that should matter. You definitely have a clear knowledge of all things Mac.