rcardona2k's Accepted Solutions

This happens to me when I suspend and resume my VMs. A few times it is resolved by logging out and logging back in (this restarts VMuser.exe), if not rebooting the VM usually works (this restarts both the VMware Tools Service and VMuser.exe). If the problem persists after reboot, repair the VMware Tools by using Virtual Machine > Install Vmware Tools and choose the repair tools option. VMware definitely has a bug here with the Tools. I'm collecting data with Process Explorer to file an SR on this problem.

@ WoodyZ is right but there's a misunderstanding. The VMware Tools iso and setup.exe are sourced from VMware Fusion's installation but they run in the context of the Windows virtual machine. If you want to see the windows.iso and it's contents on your Mac, use the Finder's Go > Go to Folder... menu option and enter "/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/isoimages", double-click on windows.iso and when the Finder opens that folder, view by list and you'll see setup.exe. VMware Fusion's Virtual Machine > Install VMware Tools option, temporarily attaches windows.iso as a virtual CD/DVD drive in the virtual machine and on Windows usually this shows up as the D:\ drive. Windows autorun is supposed to automatically start "setup.exe". When this doesn't happen, you can usually use Windows Explorer to navigate directly to the D:\ drive, open it and double-click on setup.exe to manually kickstart the process.

Do you mean that you force different Virtual Machines to different spaces? Like you always have Windows 7 in space 2 and Linux in space 3. Yes, but I wouldn't use the word "force", i assign the VM spaces at runtime. I open Fusion, then open the VMs I use like XP, Ubuntu and I move the VMs to spaces I want them in and I don't quit Fusion. I can suspend VMs as needed to free up RAM but otherwise Fusion is left running.

However, how is the folder structure supposed to be for VMs on a PC? Yes, VMs on PCs are folders as bundles are Mac-only. Keep in mind a Fusion VM is a folder with the special extension of ".vmwarevm" >My VM does not appear like a package on the PC but appears like a folder with everything in it, including an Applications and Caches folder. Which files/folders are absolutely necessary and which ones can I delete? Technically Workstation uses a subset of the VM content folders Fusion does so you could safely delete the Applications folder and some folders in appListCache but if you share the VM back and forth, these folders will get regenerated. All the other files especially the .vmx, .vmdk, .vmsn, .vmss, .vsmd and nvram files are important and you shouldn't touch them. >Also, when VMs are created on a PC, are each VM created in it's own folder, like the structure I have now? Yes, VMs on a PC are folders except Workstation/Player does create of the same cache folders that Fusion does. To have a Fusion bundle-style VM, you can add the extension ".vmwarevm" to your PC VM folder. edit: Observed Workstation's use of appData and launchMenu folders for Unity support.

Have you tried using open on the VM bundle or the .vmx file, e.g. open "/Users/you/Documents/Virtual Machines/YourVM.vmwarevm" or open "/Users/you/Documents/Virtual Machines/YourVM.vmwarevm/YourVM.vmx"? One (or both) of these should work to register and start the VM.

If you have a virtual printer mapping in Virtual Machine > Settings > Printers try disabling that. Having one printer there should be one driver set up in Windows and that will be the default printer.

If you have moved the VMware Fusion.app into a sub-folder of Application or moved it outside of /Applications, you must put the app back and run it from Applications. If not, try searching with Spotlight for multiple copies of Fusion on your system to see if you have extra copies somewhere, perhaps an older backup.

A Fusion VM in it's own bundle is wholly contained in the virtual disk (.vmdk) container. It doesn't matter from a security perspective if you partition your 1 TB drive. Before HFS+ partitions sometime bought you some protection from losing a whole volume based on corruption. That doesn't happen as much now. Another reason might be to avail yourself of smaller file block sizes, but a 1 byte file is 4 KB on both my 120 GB and my 1 TB drive. Invariably you will want to use all your drive space without worrying how much is left in separate partitions, so if you don't have to there's no benefit from partitioning. The only type of VM that requires partitioning is Boot Camp since that is how the machine can dual boot the second OS.

Fusion doesn't support mapping to host serial devices but you can use a pipe mechanism to create a virtual serial device to present to your guest OS. Others have connected Keyspans to Windows, Ubuntu and other supported guest OS's with various results. Here's a couple of old threads to read, these refer you to other threads with more info so it's a bit recursive. The google index for the Fusion forums has several more hits but they are similar. These two threads should give you an idea of what is possible with pipes and macports.

I just now tried renaming all the pieces back to their original names and Fusion was able to use the file again. So I guess now the question is how do you rename a VMDK? I thought the vmware-vdiskmanager GUI wrapper covered this case, but it does not appear to. With the VM powered down, you can use vmware-vdiskmanager on the command line in Terminal to rename the disk: "/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/vmware-vdiskmanager" -n sourceName.vmdk destinationName.vmdk Where sourceName.vmdk in OS X is usually /Users/your_username/Documents/Virtual Machines/.vmwarevm/vmname.vmdk The parent VMDK of a split disk covers renaming all of the parts, also be careful not rename the base disk if a snapshot is referencing it. For snapshots, you can delete snapshots, then rename the converged base image, or rename the snapshot leaves first moving up the snapshot chain to the base disk.

But, I am wondering if using VMware (Fusion) to do updates on my master image will in anyway mess things up, in other words, when a Boot Camp partition drive is running virtual in the VMware (Fusion) interface, will installing software and what not be the same as if installing software if booted native? In even more words, will having VMware Tools installed on the Boot Camp partition do anything to disrupt things when that boot camp is run native? Yes, you can perform software maintenance (e.g. Microsoft patches) for the Boot Camp partition in VMware Fusion nearly the same as being booted natively into the machine. The only differences are detection for device drivers that need access to the host hardware to be updated (these should be very rare). In general updating things like Windows, Office, Adobe CS/Acrobat, etc will be fine. As for the VMware Tools in Boot Camp, the virtual drivers are designed to remain latent (inactive) with no problems, i.e. not loaded == not used. There is one issue: software activation updates. VMware swaps activation files for Windows and Office to preserve activation in each environment. If you move activated copies of Vista, 7, Office 2007/2010 via WinClone this will trigger re-activation. In addition booting into VMware Fusion will require one more activation per machine so both VMware and BC environments are activated. As long as you dont replace the Boot Camp partitions, the activations should remain. For this kind activation usage, it's preferred to a Key Management Service (KMS) to manage your site licenses since retail copies have limited number of activations.

Periodically I find switching between a full screen VM (Windows XP) and a Window'ed VM (Windows XP) I see the active virtual machine preview windows flickering on top and in the current virtual machine I'm working in. I've attached a screen shot so you can see. In this example my Windows XP VM is showing my other Full Screen VM. If I close the Virtual Machine Library window the problem disappears. Has anyone else seen this one? This happened to me when I upgraded Fusion to the 3.1 release from the RC. I had XP SP3 in full screen mode and my windowed VM was Ubuntu 10.4. I've never been able to reproduce it since and I accidentally closed the Library Window before I could take a screenshot. I try to keep the Library window closed religously and even use the keyboard shortcut shift-cmd-L to bring up the Library in full screen mode to close it. Do you ever use the keyboard to bring the Library to front? I attributed the problem to having out of date VMware Tools since I've never seen the problem since. Do you have reliable reproduction steps for this issue?

But my main question is, are there significant performance differences in running Win7 in VMware versus XP, particularly with regards to 3D graphics/gaming support? I have no particular needs for Win7 unless there are significant benefits over XP for VMWare. I think there are significant graphics benefits in Windows 7 which VMware Fusion lets you exploit including: Windows WDDM driver model, VMware offers a native WDDM video driver for Vista and 7 which allows for Aero effects Windows 7 offers DirectX 11 support which you can use in Boot Camp and a subset of in Fusion Direct3D and OpenGL support There are other indirect benefits of 7 over XP like relatively better security

If you're using NAT, the VM is behind a host level NAT address (172.x.y.z) that your Internet router knows nothing about. You could forward port 80 from the router to your host's IP, then configure /Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/vmnet8/nat.conf to port forward port 80 requests to your VM's 172 address on port 80. This requires turning off Apache on OS X, if it's running because that would cause a port conflict. Your other option, is to change the VM from NAT to bridged, in which case your OS X and your Ubuntu VM would be on same subnet with DHCP address handed out by the Internet router. The router would be forwarding traffic directly to the VM without any additional port forwarding.

The iso images are triggered by installer receipts, in OS X 10.5 that's in /Library/Receipts, for OS X 10.6, those are in /var/db/receipts. For 10.5 delete the tools .pkg bundle and for 10.6, delete the com.vmware.tools.linux.bom and com.vmware.tools.linux.plist files.

What's the best way to convert the Boot Camp VM to a "normal" VM on the same iMac? (Migration Assistant? VMware Converter? Reinstallation of Windows?) "Best" is subjective and relative. For Windows, clean installs are always considered "best" but you initially lose all apps and documents necessating some sort of recovery/re-install phase, so that's a pain. Importing, Converting, Migrating should be about the same with possible side-effects of your C: drive getting resized and triggering software re-activation in several products like Windows, Office, Adobe products, etal. The upside is everything's intact including whatever state of build-up Windows has in the registry, caches, temp files, etc.

Thanks that's much better. There are a couple of settings to toggle to see if anything changes: 1. Windows 7 (x64) uses an Intel e1000 (PRO/1000) by default, there's a power management setting that sometimes interfere with connectivity. You can check in the Power Management tab of the network adapter properties for the setting "Allow the computer to turn off the device to save power" and uncheck that option: 2. Use to locate your VM's .vmx configuration file, find and change the ethernet0.linkStatePropagation.enable setting to FALSE, e.g. ethernet0.linkStatePropagation.enable = "FALSE" Good luck, Richard

If you're handy on the command line and have direct connectivity between your Mac and a vSphere host, you can use /Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/vmware-vdiskmanager to transfer your Fusion VMDK's directly to an ESX host. Here's the relevant usage from vmware-vdiskmanager: ex 6: vmware-vdiskmanager -r sourceDisk.vmdk -t 4 -h esx-name.mycompany.com \ -u username -f passwordfile "[storage1]/path/to/targetDisk.vmdk" On your Mac sourceDisk.vmdk is the one in /Users/you/Documents/Virtual Machines/VMbundle.vmwarevm/YourVMDisk.vmdk, or in the case of a snapshot, the leaf disk name appended with an -00000x.vmdk name. Once the VMDK is on the ESX host you can create a new VM referencing the VMDK file. You could also scp your .vmx file to the ESX host, but I prefer to create a new VM to build a machine off of vSphere default VM settings.

You should look at this Microsoft patch: A hotfix is available for Remote Desktop Client (RDC) 5.1 to fix a drawing failure after you apply the security update 958470 (MS09-044) on a computer that is running Windows XP SP2 In particular the description: >gridlines are visible in the terminal session window. >Notes >This issue may occur regardless of the operating system that is installed on the terminal server. >This issue is more likely to occur when the terminal session window is open but not maximized. >When this issue occurs, you can temporarily resolve the issue by maximizing the terminal session window. >This issue does not occur if you use RDC 6.0.