VMware Communities
jbutl88
Contributor
Contributor

Fusion 8.5.8 & macOS High Sierra GM

Hi

With the GM release of High Sierra today, I am wondering if Fusion 8.5.8 is compatible with this OS? I'm unable to find documentation about this on the vmpage - the latest OS compatible listed is Sierra which I am currently running. I would like to upgrade to High Sierra for APFS, but also need access to my VMs for work related purposes. I'm running fusion 8.5.8 pro on a 2016 15" MBP.

Thanks in advance,

Jakob

20 Replies
Mikero
Community Manager
Community Manager

8.5 'works' but isn't considered Supported.

Fusion 10 is fully supported, and we'll be releasing that TOMORROW 😃

(You heard it first here! Smiley Wink )

-
Michael Roy - Product Marketing Engineer: VCF
jbutl88
Contributor
Contributor

Great, looking forward to TWO upgrades tomorrow!!

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ColoradoMarmot
Champion
Champion

Ahh the late great Fusion 9, may you rest in a brief peace 🙂

Seriously, thanks to you and the team for the quick support.  I have a number of folks upgrading today who need a 'fully supported' version.

Razyr
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Fusion 8.5.8 isn't working with Bootcamp partitions on High Sierra.   I can dual boot to either OS X High Sierra or Windows 10, but the existing Bootcamp VM blew up immediately after the OS X 10.13 update.  When I try to recreate it, Fusion is telling me  "... could not find any Boot Camp volumes on this Mac."

I wasn't expecting the current version of Fusion to leave me hanging like that.   Turns out my support for Fusion 8 has expired as well.  I went through my past email and I can't see any notification or offer to renew.   I'm feeling a bit like you guys dropped the ball on this one.  

Loyal VMware customer since 2001.

Link648099
Contributor
Contributor

Mikero,

I purchased 8.5 on July 13th after buying a new iMac and discovering version 7 would not work on it. A short time later, version 10 was announced along with the news that anyone who bought 8.5 (from then on) would get a free upgrade.

As a loyal customer who has purchased multiple version all the way from 1.1, I think it would be right to extend the free upgrade to users who purchased 8.5 in the past six months. I'd even be okay with a tiered upgrade price too.

Especially since VMware is not officially supporting 8.5 on the new operating system, which does not make sense to me.

I've been very happy with VMware Fusion for many years, but will consider the competition next time I choose to upgrade.

mesrouilles
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hi.

I'm facing the same issue, but I'm not sure it's Fusion's fault:

- Bootcamp utility itself tells me it can't do anything as if I've altered partitions using another tool, altough nothing seems weird in disk utility.

- In Windows (booting with the Alt key at startup), Bootcamp utility doesn't see MacOS partition and I get an error if I ask to reboot on MacOS.

APFS conversion may be the cause of that, I guess. Bootcamp needs an update soon...

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Razyr
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Seems like this was a known problem back in May.    VMware Fusion BootCamp detection not working with Windows 10 Creators Update (1703)    "Yep, this is our bug and a known issue. Expect a patch soon. - Michael Roy, Product Line Marketing Manager: Fusion & Workstation"

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like there's been a patch.

I guess this is something that silently broke for those of us who had working Boot Camp VMs.  It came to light for me when my Boot Camp VM crashed and burned after the High Sierra update yesterday.

I also tried the solution that was mentioned here https://communities.vmware.com/thread/560992  , specifically GitHub - mikew/vmware-fusion-bootcamp: Of VMWare Fusion and Boot Camp partitions   No luck with Mike's script either.

While it says in this thread that Fusion 10 is due out today, all other references that I can find say it's not due until sometime in October.

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mesrouilles
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Oh, that's bad... (thanks for the information).

As I noticed other bugs with HS (public release, not GM) about partitions, I thought Fusion wasn't falty at all.

It seems it's not that simple...

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Razyr
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

This is turning into one of the worst upgrade experiences I've had in many years.

* My support period has ended for Fusion 8.5

* Fusion 8.5 isn't playing nicely with Windows 10 Boot Camp since the 1703 Windows update

* Fusion 8.5 allegedly works with OS X 10.13, but the incompatability issue with Windows 10 Boot Camp makes this a moot point.

* Fusion 8.5 is unsupported, so even if my support period hadn't ended, I guess I'd be out of luck, even though at launch I had all of the current versions of Win10, OS X and Fusion installed.   It's not as if I was looking for out of date software support.

* Fusion 10 is now available in the VMware store, but three attempts to upgrade my current 8.5 license have failed

I'm officially looking for an alternative virtualization platform at this point after 16 years of VMware.

<EDIT>After numerous attempts, the VMware store finally allowed me to upgrade.

On the plus side, Fusion 10 did recognize my Boot Camp partition and tried to create a VM from it.

On the downside, it errored out with the message "Boot Camp volume preprocessing failed.  You may not be able to boot your Boot Camp volume as a virtual machine."

When I did attempt to start, it attempted to start up from EFI VMware Virtual IDE Hard Drive, SATA CDROM and Network then dropped out to the blue screen of the Boot Manager.

At least now I once again have VMware Tech Support to fall back on.

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srinigvas
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

You could try following the steps from the KB https://kb.vmware.com/kb/2151780

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Razyr
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Thanks for that suggestion.  I spent over an hour with VMware Support yesterday.  They tried that, but Fusion 10 is still failing the scan/preprocessing step.  I believe things have been escalated to the next tier of support.

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mesrouilles
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hi. I tried that one but when I reactivate SIP, the VM still doesn't start...

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DeltaCharlieLim
Contributor
Contributor

I'd love to know how you guys are getting Fusion 8 to run on High Sierra.  The $110-per-system upgrade cost of Fusion is the only thing keeping me from upgrading to High Sierra Smiley Sad and I have been unable to get Fusion 8 to run on High Sierra.

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wila
Immortal
Immortal

Hi,

I have not heard of any successes of running Fusion 8 on macOS HS either.

The only tip I can give is to hold out a few more weeks and buy the upgrade at black friday.

If previous years experiences are anything to go by then there will be a reasonable discount at that time.

For example this one was from last year:

VMware Fusion on Twitter: "Our #BlackFriday deals are now live! Save 40% on new licenses and upgrade...

--

Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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ColoradoMarmot
Champion
Champion

And there's a 30 day trial in the meantime.

8.5.x was a free upgrade from 8.x.  This is the first new paid version in two years.  That's not bad considering it's relatively cheap for what it does (versus, for example, Workstation).

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srinigvas
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

You could try the steps listed in the below sequence:

1) Disable SIP (System Integrity Protection)

- Reboot your Mac machine into Recovery Mode by restarting the computer and holding down Command + R

- Select Utilities -> Terminal

- In terminal window, run the below command and press Enter.

    csrutil disable

- Restart your Mac and boot to MacOS High Sierra

P.S. To Enable and Disable SIP, please refer VMware KB article : https://kb.vmware.com/kb/2151780

2) Delete the Boot Camp VM from Virtual Machine Library

3) Delete the Boot Camp Folder at ~/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/Virtual Machines

4) Eject the Boot Camp partition which is mounted on Mac Finder.

5) Restart VMware Fusion and create the Boot Camp VM.

6) Power on Boot Camp VM and Powered off the VM. Quit Fusion.

7) Edit Boot Camp.vmdk file and change "RDONLY 6 FLAT" to "RW 6 ZERO"

Steps to Edit BootCamp.vmdk

7a) Navigate to location ~/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/Virtual Machines

7b) Right Click on Boot Camp VM > select Show Package Contents

7c) Open BootCamp.vmdk with Text Edit, locate "RDONLY 6 FLAT" and replace it with "RW 6 ZERO"

😎 Enable SIP by running “csrutil enable” on terminal in recovery mode on your Mac Machine

9) Reboot and login to Mac OS and check the status of the Boot Camp Virtual Machine

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DeltaCharlieLim
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks, yeah, I'll probably try for this.  I mean, I don't NEED High Sierra, I just WANT High Sierra.  In the meantime, Sierra and Fusion 8.5 run just fine.

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mesrouilles
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hi.

I tried this but it didn't work. As soon as SIP is enabled again Bootcamp VM can't start.

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HarrytheHorse12
Contributor
Contributor

I have just done the same thing and got a similar result. VMware wont start at all

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