VMware Communities
vmNewb35
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
Jump to solution

Restore of FUSION from laptop crash

Hi All. My MBPro bit the dust last week and I had to reinstall Snow Leopard and use Time Machine to get my "stuff" back. I went and grabbed VMWare from the Applications folder and restored it and now it tells me that it is unregistered and I need to enter the license key.

I looked on the VMWARE site for licenses and these are now held by our IT dept. I asked them for my key and the one that they gave me (25 characters for version 3.1) doesn't seem to be working.

Anybody know how to find the license from my backups? Is it stored somewhere? Any ways to get back and running asap?

Thanks a bunch for any help.

Reply
0 Kudos
1 Solution

Accepted Solutions
WoodyZ
Immortal
Immortal
Jump to solution

1. VMware Fusion must be installed via its installer not just restored from Time Machine as there is much more to the VMware Fusion application then just the "VMware Fusion.app" bundle. So if you have to download the latest .dmg from the VMware site and run the uninstaller and then reinstall, that is what I'd do first.

2. The Serial Number for VMware Fusion 3 is stored in the "/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/license-fusion-30-e1-200902" file so you can search your TM backup for it.

3. It is a known fact the Time Machine is not 100% reliable in backing up and or restoring Virtual Machines under all circumstances and IMO therefore should not be used to backup Virtual Machines and therefore you should exclude them from the TM backup and manually backup as needed/wanted.

View solution in original post

Reply
0 Kudos
2 Replies
WoodyZ
Immortal
Immortal
Jump to solution

1. VMware Fusion must be installed via its installer not just restored from Time Machine as there is much more to the VMware Fusion application then just the "VMware Fusion.app" bundle. So if you have to download the latest .dmg from the VMware site and run the uninstaller and then reinstall, that is what I'd do first.

2. The Serial Number for VMware Fusion 3 is stored in the "/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/license-fusion-30-e1-200902" file so you can search your TM backup for it.

3. It is a known fact the Time Machine is not 100% reliable in backing up and or restoring Virtual Machines under all circumstances and IMO therefore should not be used to backup Virtual Machines and therefore you should exclude them from the TM backup and manually backup as needed/wanted.

Reply
0 Kudos
vmNewb35
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
Jump to solution

Exactly the info I was looking for Woody. I will go the manual route and use the serial number that IT says should work. And thanks for the heads-up on TM Backups not being good for VMs. Smiley Happy

Chad

Reply
0 Kudos