Regardless of XP’s status in the world and if one should or should not use it, VMware still lists it as being supported by Fusion. Note the compatibility list technically doesn’t list XP as deprecated for Fusion. Just ESXi.
They still ship the last version of Tools for XP in Fusion 13.
It’s clearly a bug. The defect of not mounting the right version of the Tools ISO installer for XP should not take major development effort to identify or fix.
Conversely, in the grand scheme of things it’s not a showstopper bug. XP VMs already using tools on earlier Fusion versions will still work on Fusion 13 so they didn’t break anything in core support for XP VMs. The installation workaround is relatively straightforward. Find the file in the VMware Fusion.app bundle, and make a copy of it somewhere else. Then mount the winPreVista.iso file to the virtual CD drive.
I suggested earlier to download Tools from VMware. Evidently they've either removed or hidden the page to download the 10.0 version containing those tools. So it's a bit harder than I orginally thought.
- Paul (Technogeezer)
Editor of the Unofficial Fusion Companion Guides
