VMwareFusion10 won't start VirtualDisk (Win7) after update to MacOS HighSierra

[flyhard]

Hello everybody!

Tried to browse through this forum for clues, but unable to find a similar problem like I have, so posting this (sorry if repeating something)

Scenario:

1. In macOS Sierra and WMware Fusion 10, all was working fine with my BootCamp partition with Win7.

2. Had to update to HighSierra, which went all right.

3. Then, VMware won't start up my BootCamp partion with this message:

"

Cannot open the disk '/Users/j/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/Virtual Machines/Boot Camp/Boot Camp.vmwarevm/Boot Camp.vmdk' or one of the snapshot disks it depends on.

Module 'Disk' power on failed.

Failed to start the virtual machine."

This is what I have in my .vmdk-file

----------------------------------------------

reateType="partitionedDevice"

# Extent description

RW 34 FLAT "Boot Camp-pt.vmdk" 0

RDONLY 6 FLAT "/dev/disk0" 34 partitionUUID @disk:diskModel=APPLE|20SSD|20SM256C,diskSize=251000193024

RW 409600 FLAT "/dev/disk0s1" 0 partitionUUID @partition:diskModel=APPLE|20SSD|20SM256C,diskSize=251000193024,partSize=209715200,partOffset=20480,partMediaUUID=00005084-053B-0000-247C-0000EE7D0000,partVolumeUUID=BDC1974F-6B8C-3DAE-9DB2-3AA3C17BF506

RW 418243040 ZERO

RW 1269536 ZERO

RW 1752 ZERO

RW 70309888 FLAT "/dev/disk0s4" 0 partitionUUID @partition:diskModel=APPLE|20SSD|20SM256C,diskSize=251000193024,partSize=35998662656,partOffset=215001071616,partMediaUUID=FE941E3C-FA64-4AB4-B726-1A6CF28C67F3,partVolumeUUID=EDA100B2-919A-4AE3-B279-BF91A4405F05

RW 863 ZERO

RW 33 FLAT "Boot Camp-pt.vmdk" 34

# The Disk Data Base

#DDB

ddb.adapterType = "ide"

ddb.geometry.biosCylinders = "1024"

ddb.geometry.biosHeads = "255"

ddb.geometry.biosSectors = "63"

ddb.geometry.cylinders = "16383"

ddb.geometry.heads = "16"

ddb.geometry.sectors = "63"

ddb.longContentID = "ca7d770d71ba2c1b41d1209d602ef38d"

ddb.toolsInstallType = "1"

ddb.toolsVersion = "10304"

ddb.uuid = "60 00 C2 9f fc 93 8b 39-ef 56 27 6e 95 35 68 3c"

ddb.virtualHWVersion = "12" "

------------------------------------------------------

And my partition has this data, from the Disk Utility (sorry for the Swedish...):

-------------------------------

Volymnamn: BOOTCAMP

Volymtyp: Fysisk volym

BSD-enhetsnod: disk0s3

Inlänkningsplats: /Volumes/BOOTCAMP

Filsystem: NTFS (Windows NT File System)

Anslutning: SATA

Enhetsträdsökväg: IODeviceTree:/PCI0@0/SATA@1F,2/PRT0@0/PMP@0

-------------------------------

All this is WAY over my head when it comes to computers, What to do? :smileycry:

Thanks!

[Shuppy]

I don't have any answer to your question, but I am interested in so far as I would like to know whether Win7 will work on Fusion 10 with OSX High Sierra.

I am still using  Win7 x64 on Fusion 8 on MacOS Sierra at the moment.

[flyhard]

So, VMware support replied on another chancel, and the info goes:

--------

I wanted to keep you informed that MacOS High Sierra is no longer able to read the legacy BIOS boot data from the boot disk when System Integrity Protection (SIP) is enabled, this makes the Boot Camp virtual machine created by Fusion 10 does not have correct boot sector to start up from.

To resolve this issue, follow below steps to disable SIP on MacOS High Sierra. After SIP is disabled, Windows Boot Camp partition that uses legacy BIOS and is located on boot disk can run as a virtual machine in Fusion properly and then enable SIP.

Remove the virtual machine from the Liberary

- Launch VMware Fusion

- Click on Window and select Virtual Machine library

- Right Click on the VM and select Delete, then click on Remove

Reboot your Mac machine into Recovery Mode by restarting the computer and holding down Command + R Select Utilities - > Terminal In terminal window, run csrutil disable and press Enter.

Restart your Mac and boot to MacOS High Sierra

Launch Fusion, select File - > New from Fusion menu, double click Install from Boot Camp, select Create a Boot Camp virtual machine radio button, then follow the on-screen instructions to finish the Boot Camp virtual machine creation Power on the newly created Boot Camp virtual machine, verify it can boot up correctly Shut down Boot Camp partition

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

Select Utilities > Terminal

In Terminal window, run 'csrutil enable' to enable SIP and press Enter

Launch Fusion, right click the Boot Camp virtual machine in Virtual Machine Library and select Show in Finder menu, a Finder window opens and shows the location of the Boot Camp virtual machine Right click Boot Camp.vmwarevm in finder and select Show Package Contents menu Open Boot Camp.vmdk file with Text edit application Locate the line starting with RDONLY 6 FLAT , substitute the whole line with RW 6 ZERO Save the change made to Boot Camp.vmdk file Now the Boot Camp virtual machine should be able to boot up correctly.

-----------

That worked fine!

Now, as additional information regarding all You who updated, or going to update, to High Sierra: If you're running a SolidStateDrive, the HighSierra upgrade will reformat the file system to APFS. This in combination of using TimeMachine backups will create a sort of "ghost partition", or snap-shots. In my case, Windows 7 did not boot after the VMware fix, not as a Virtual Machine nor native - just a blinkin "_".

Making it worse, BootCamp assistant couldn't create a new partition for a clean win7 install - panic!

So, there are apple.com-discussions describing how to delete these TimeMachine snap-shots, but that did not work for me.

Only solution to get rid of old system echoes, migrated into High Sierra, stuffing my day up, was to make a clean format of my mac, and install HighSirra from the recovery partition tool, recreate my mac with a TimeMachine backup. Then, the BootCamp assistant could create the partition and run the installation for Win7 as usual.