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Rich_Cohen
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Fusion Pro 13 on Mac becomes unresponsive when editing VBA in Excel under windows 10

About a week ago I upgraded from Fusion Pro 12 to 13.

I'm running Fusion on an iMac, 3.8 Ghz 8-Core Intel Core i7 using OX 12.6.

I'm running MS Excel Office Professional Plus 2016 under Windows 10.

After editing some VBA code in an Excel workbook, The Fusion window becomes unresponsive and stays that way. The cursor is frozen, but I can switch to other applications on my iMac and they respond normally. Activity Monitor shows CPU use in the 200% to 300% range for vmware-vmx when it is normally under 50%.

This has now happened 3 times in succession. In one case it occurred while opening the VBA window. In the other two cases it occurred after 2-15 minutes of work.

This is new behavior. I did not have this problem with Fusion Pro version 12. I've rebooted my iMac but that did not resolve the problem. In the most recent case, I allowed Fusion to remain in the unresponsive state for more than 45 minutes with no change. After force quitting vmware-vmx using Activity Monitor, the Fusion window closes, but Fusion itself remains active.

When I upgraded to 13 I purchase the support option, but the VMware web site does not seem to recognize me as an authorized support customer.

If I can't resolve this problem, I'll try reinstalling Fusion Pro 12.

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ColoradoMarmot
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What is the guest configuration - how many CPU's and RAM (and how much ram is in the host)?

I do recall a problem with old excel versions, but it's been years (2016 would be about right)....

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Rich_Cohen
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2 CPU cores, 6 GB of RAM (out of 32 GB on Mac) 100 MB of disk in host

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Rich_Cohen
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UPDATE: The problem is NOT with Excel. I just encountered the same problem while using Windows Explorer. I'm pretty sure this is some kind of configuration problem between my iMac and Fusion Pro 13. As long as I do frequent saves, I can get my work done, but it's very irritating.

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Rich_Cohen
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Another discovery: If I suspend the virtual machine and then restart it, the problem goes away and I can resume my work exactly where I was at the time of failure.

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Rich_Cohen
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More news. After two events my first attempt to suspend the virtual machine failed, but second attempt succeeded. For about half a dozen other events, the first attempt worked.

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ColoradoMarmot
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So two thoughts:

First, I found the old thread I remembered: https://communities.vmware.com/t5/Horizon-Desktops-and-Apps/Excel-2016-Freeze-Crash-in-VDI/td-p/1414...

And second, if your machine uses a physical disk, it's possible it's starting to fail. Have you run first aid on it and checked the smart status?

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Rich_Cohen
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dlhotka,

Thanks. My iMac's internal drive is a Solid State Drive. I've seen no sign that it is failing. Disk First Aid found nothing to report.

I suspect either a defect in Fusion or a compatibility issue between Fusion and my iMac. The latter is more likely than the former.

At this point I'm able to live with the problem, but it's a continuing irritation.

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ColoradoMarmot
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It's the only report that I've seen, but perhaps folks haven't reported it.

Question - if you disable or enable 3d acceleration does it go away?

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Rich_Cohen
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I couldn't find any control relating to 3D acceleration.  Tell me what to look for and I'll try it.

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Rich_Cohen
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I've had a very frustrating month.  I finally got VMware to open a licensing support trouble ticket.  They told me that their sales system had failed to post my purchase to the support system.  They gave me a refund for the purchase and told me to buy it again and that the purchase would be registered.  (They also gave me a discount ticket that didn't work properly.)  I repurchased Fusion Pro 13 upgrade with support and got a new product key, but my new purchase is still not registered and I still can't get tech. support for my problem.  They told me to call sales, but all I got was a answering AI that said "goodbye."  I left an contact request for sale on their web site, but not response.

Problem Update:

I've found a workaround for the frozen Fusion window.  I can fix the problem by suspending the virtual machine and then restoring it.  To do this I must switch out of Fusion to my Mac environment and then switch back to the Fusion application and use the Virtual Machine menu to suspend.  Some times I have to do this a second time.

There is a new problem.  Occasionally my entire Fusion window turns black and I can't correct that without restarting Fusion.  This happens when I'm running a long duration process and I must wait for that process to finish and with the black screen I can't tell when this has happened.  This is a random problem and I haven't yet been able to explore all the possible corrective actions.  Sometimes clicking inside the VMware window will show a single application window, but sometimes that has no effect and when it works it isn't always permanent.

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ColoradoMarmot
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It's in the VM settings dialog (hit the gear at the top of the window when shut down), and look under graphics.

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Rich_Cohen
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I'm still confused.  I'm running VMware Fusion 13 on an iMac (2020 model) running OS 12.6.2 - Monterey.

VMware has a Virtual Machine menu in the menu bar.  One choice is Settings...  (or Command E). I've opened that and found 18 choices, but none is named Graphics.   There is a Display setting but that has nothing to do with 3D acceleration.  Same with Processors and Memory.  Advanced has a gear icon, but nothing relevant.

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ColoradoMarmot
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Under Display, there should be an option to 'accelerate 3d graphics'

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