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MiguelBazan
Contributor
Contributor

VM Ware Fusion 5 on Mavericks

I have mountain lion and vmware fusion 5, i want to buy the licence but i also want to have mavericks, so if i upgrade to mavericks will fusion 5 stop working?

That happened to me when upgrading lion to mountain lion, so i dont want to spent money twice

should i wait for mavericks to be available and then buy the licence, or buy it now?

13 Replies
WoodyZ
Immortal
Immortal

If you're planing to use OS X Mavericks then I'd wait for VMware Fusion 6 which in all likelihood will be available before October 15, 2015 as that's when the VMware Fusion Technology Preview 2013 expires and the last two major release, in there cases, occurred before the technology preview expired.   Additionally I also would not consider moving to OS X Mavericks till a later release.  I've typically waited till the 10.x.2 release before upgrading.

MiguelBazan
Contributor
Contributor

SO vmware fusion 5 will not work on mavericks?

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WoodyZ
Immortal
Immortal

Well since GA Release of OS X Mavericks hasn't occurred yet it hard to say what issues the current latest VMware Fusion 5 will have on a GA Release of OS X Mavericks however it seems that with every OS X Release the current, much less older versions, have some issue that need to be addressed.  The bottom line though is with the imminent release of VMware Fusion 6 then IMO it's more prudent to wait an purchase it as the developers will have probably focused more attention to it and OS X Mavericks.  That said I haven't seen anything that leads me to believe that VMware Fusion 5.0.3 will not be able to run on GA Release of OS X Mavericks as I know some users have it running on the DP Release of OS X Mavericks.

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dafunk9
Contributor
Contributor

Vmware Fusion 5 works fine under Mavericks. With one annoying gotcha: full screen fails to disable the menu bar if using Fusion on secondary monitors.

MiguelBazan
Contributor
Contributor

Have you used it under Mavericks?

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ColoradoMarmot
Champion
Champion

Don't bother - 10.9 support will be focused on VMware Fusion Technology Preview 2013

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JCloix
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Fusion 5 worked fine on OS X Mavericks, except the DNS resolution of my VM in NAT mode (DNS resolution failure).

I upgraded this morning to Fusion 6 and all my troubles disappeared.

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eugeneyk
Contributor
Contributor

I installed Fusion 5 on my Macbook Air running ML and installed Windows 7 as guest and everything was fine. I upgraded to Mavericks, and now my guest is showing severe CPU usage for even the most mundane tasks. I'm not sure what's wrong, but since Mavericks is not officially supported with Fusion 5, I can't complain. Use with caution I guess.

This is from opening an Access database and running a query. The final peak right after the brief low is simply from opening the Windows snipping tool to get a screen grab, which is just nuts. My machine is a 2013 13" Macbook Air running a 1.3GHz Core i5 processor and 8GB ram. I originally allocated 2GB of ram and ran fine, but I tried allocating up to 5 GB of ram with no effect.

FusionCPU.GIF

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GlennyG
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Apart from intermittent issues with mouse clicking -- which I'm not sure is related to Fusion 5 -- I can't see any reason to pay VMWare good money for a feature-free "upgrade" (or service pack) to Fusion 6,  especially as the expensive minor Fusion 5 update was released *less* than a year ago.

I run Fusion 5 on Mavericks extensively to develop in a Windows 2003 server.  I test on lots of VMs including Windows XP,  Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1,  Windows 2012.  None,  I repeat,  none of them have shown any issues.

I've just run up the Windows 7 VM and have it configured with 2 CPU cores,  and it's NOT showing the issues you're seeing;  the CPU is quite happily quiescent.

Of course as soon as I posted this,  the fan started...  Looking at the processes,  it's the damn Chrome updater 'cos I've not run the VM for a while.  i.e. it's nothing to do with Fusion and everything to do with Windos.

Which processes are running on your VM to jack up the CPU load?

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eugeneyk
Contributor
Contributor

The main issue turned out to be a network driver (I use a USB 3.0 to Gigabit Ethernet dongle). Not sure why it caused the horrible CPU spikes, but error logs pointed to it. I re-installed the driver(it still hasn't been updated for Mavericks so it was the same version I had installed), and most of the abnormal CPU spikes went away.

I'm still showing high CPU usage when simply navigating through my file system. The first screenshot attached is on my VM, simply going back and forth between a folder and its sub-folder, no media content showing, just the details list with a decent amount of files in each. The second is on my 5 year old desktop natively running Windows. The larger spikes are when I rapidly go back and forth using keyboard shortcuts.

Capture1.PNG

VM spiking to 100%

Capture2.PNG

Native with relatively smaller spiking (the second clump), even with rapid switching.

I also still have an issue where my mouse cursor disappears over certain portions of my screen in certain situations, especially when tabbing back and forth from Mac environment to the VM.

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CarlSchuler
Contributor
Contributor

Just this afternoon, I took a chance and upgraded to Mavericks(10.9) from 10.8.5. Running Fusion 5( Windows 8 guest). I'm also using a thunderbolt>VGA adapter to run a 2nd monitor for MAC activities. 

So far, no troubles.  There was one episodic glitch requiring the use of Mac's forcequit to shut down the vmware menu bar.  I agree with WoodyZ-to wait for the 10.9.2 edition; however, I did have time this afternoon for troubleshooting-if needed. 

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tytyjohhni
Contributor
Contributor

I am running Mac OS X 10.9 and VMware Fusion 5. Ever since I upgraded to 5.0.4 I'm no longer able to use some iCloud features. My calendar syncs up fine, but I'm not able to enable Find My Mac, use Messages, or even login in to iCloud.com. Has anyone else noticed this issue or found a resolution?

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CarlSchuler
Contributor
Contributor

Based on what you reported, I logged onto icloud.com and had no problems navigating the site with Internet Explorer.

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