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Arndis
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Working Boot Camp partition "not prepared to run as a virtual machine"

I have a 2017 iMac with Mojave (10.14.6) and APFS. Since the pandemic started, have been working from home using a Boot Camp partition with Windows 10 and NTFS. It was a clean install, no cloning or imaging tools used, which boots and runs reliably. I installed the trial version of VMware Fusion 11.5.6, and was planning to run that Boot Camp partition as a virtual machine directly, rather than importing a copy. (I want to have easy access to both OSes, but will sometimes boot directly into Windows for hardware-intensive tasks like CAD, design, and gaming.)

Windows had been properly shut down, but when I created the VM, I got this message:

The Boot Camp volume is not prepared to run as a virtual machine. It appears that Windows did not shut down cleanly the last time it was used.

To shut down Windows cleanly, go to System Preferences > Startup Disk and set Windows as the startup operating system. Restart your system. Once in Windows, use the Startup Disk pane in the Control Panel to select Mac OS X as the startup system, then click the Restart button to return to OS X.

The first few times, it made a broken VM that can't find its boot disk. The last few times, it doesn't create a VM at all.

Here are the steps I have tried so far:

  • No change -- the procedure suggested in the error message
  • No change -- steps from https://communities.vmware.com/thread/152344 :
    • open the Mac terminal
    • rm -dfr "~/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/Virtual Machines"
    • reboot into Mac and try making the VM again
  • No change -- steps from https://communities.vmware.com/thread/635124 :
    • boot into Windows, and run the command
    • shutdown /s /f /t 0
    • reboot into Mac and try making the VM again
  • No change -- completely remove VMware, reboot, reinstall VMware, and try again
  • No change -- steps from https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2151780
    • reboot into Recovery mode
    • disable System Integrity Protection
    • reboot into Mac and try making the VM again

Also consulted:

I have attached the problem report and ~/Library/Logs/VMware Fusion/vmware-vmfusion.log

Output from Mac terminal for "diskutil list" :

/dev/disk0 (internal):

   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER

   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                         121.3 GB   disk0

   1:                        EFI EFI                     314.6 MB   disk0s1

   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk2         121.0 GB   disk0s2

/dev/disk1 (internal, physical):

   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER

   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *2.0 TB     disk1

   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk1s1

   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk2         1.8 TB     disk1s2

   3:       Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP                245.2 GB   disk1s3

/dev/disk2 (synthesized):

   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER

   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +1.9 TB     disk2

                                 Physical Stores disk0s2, disk1s2

   1:                APFS Volume Macintosh HD            1.7 TB     disk2s1

   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 43.2 MB    disk2s2

   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                510.4 MB   disk2s3

   4:                APFS Volume VM                      2.1 GB     disk2s4

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