VMware Fusion is not supported on this version of OS X

[JaynD]

Hi

i have upgraded my Mac to OS X El Capitan and after the upgrade i cannot access VMware (there is a disabled white sign on it). the message says "you can't use this version of the application "VMware Fusion" with this version of OS X. you have VMware fusion 5.0.4".

if i update VMware to the latest version will i lose the data on the virtual machine? i have windows 7 installed on there with alot of important documents and no back up.

please could you help me? will i be able to recover my info there? and i am not sure how to upgrade the version (i read somewhere i have to uninstall and reinstall).

please help in anyway you can.

Many thanks!

[wila · Accepted solution]

Hi,

You can drag your VMware Fusion 5.x to the trash can, that will remove it.

Then download the latest version of VMware Fusion (currently VMware Fusion 😎 from here: Try VMware Fusion or Fusion Pro. Run Windows on a Mac without rebooting.

That's a functionally unlimited trial so you can see if it is worth your spending you can run the trial for 30 days before actually committing to spending anything.

After the 30 days, you buy a license to change the installed Fusion into an unlimited version.

If you would want to go back to Fusion 5.x then you would need to go back to OS X Mavericks as that the last fully supported version for Fusion 5.x

As for your Virtual Machines, they will just work. On startup you are asked to upgrade the virtual hardware and after booting it will automatically try and update VMware Tools.

After that, you're back up and running.

--

Wil

[JaynD]

Thanks alot. It worked!

[CliCar97]

I have a similar problem, only I upgraded to MacOSX 10.11.6 and dowloaded and installed Fusion Pro 8.1.1.  The disturbing thing is that I did the same upgrade on another MacBook Pro and everything worked fine!  So, do I now need to go through the same process as JaynD??

The behaviour seems very inconsistent.

Any ideas?

[wila]

Hi,

Similar problem ? You're failing to list the differences, so without listing the exact differences we have to guess to answer.

Anyways if you're coming from Fusion 5 then Fusion is expected to not run. If your machine is able to run Fusion 5 after updating to 10.11.6 then your  machine has some non standard tweaks. In Fusion 5 the way the kernel extensions are digitally signed is different as is requested since Yosemite, this was addresses in Fusion 6.

AFAICR this is nowadays a requirement in 10.11 unless you add some tweaks.

In short, yes you're probably best off to also install Fusion 8.

--

Wil