VM Fusion 13.5 Esd2iso can't get URL for download Windows

[titoBIS]

 Doesn't work

[Technogeezer]

That appears to be a bug in the tool when run from the GUI - it doesn't work for non-English system languages. (At least it's been confirmed for French).

It will work if you use the command line version.

1.	Open the Terminal app.
2.	Change the working directory to the Desktop cd ~/Desktop
3.	Mount the ISO file containing the VMware Tools for Windows 11 ARM hdiutil attach "/Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Library/isoimages/arm64/windows.iso" The ISO will appear on the Desktop as “VMware Tools” and will be found at /Volumes/VMware Tools.
4.	Download the ESD from Microsoft for the desired edition and language: /Applications/VMware\ Fusion.app/Contents/Library/vmw_esd2iso getesd --edition "edition" --lang "tag" where edition is “Professional” for an ISO containing Home and Professional editions, or “Enterprise” for an ISO containing Professional and Enterprise editions. tag is one of the Windows 11 ARM language tags used to select the desired language of the Windows installer: Language Tag   Language Description bg-bg          Bulgarian (Bulgaria)          cs-cz          Czech (Czechia)               da-dk          Danish (Denmark)              de-de          German (Germany)              el-gr          Greek (Greece)                en-gb          English (United Kingdom)      en-us          English (United States)       es-es          Spanish (Spain, International Sort) es-mx          Spanish (Mexico)              et-ee          Estonian (Estonia)            fi-fi          Finnish (Finland)             fr-ca          French (Canada)               fr-fr          French (France)               he-il          Hebrew (Israel)               hr-hr          Croatian (Croatia)            hu-hu          Hungarian (Hungary)           it-it          Italian (Italy)               ja-jp          Japanese (Japan)              ko-kr          Korean (Korea)                lt-lt          Lithuanian (Lithuania)        lv-lv          Latvian (Latvia)              nb-no          Norwegian Bokmål (Norway)    nl-nl          Dutch (Netherlands)           pl-pl          Polish (Poland)               pt-br          Portuguese (Brazil)           pt-pt          Portuguese (Portugal)         ro-ro          Romanian (Romania)            ru-ru          Russian (Russia)              sk-sk          Slovak (Slovakia)             sl-si          Slovenian (Slovenia)          sr-latn-rs     Serbian (Latin, Serbia)       sv-se          Swedish (Sweden)              th-th          Thai (Thailand)               tr-tr          Turkish (Turkey)              uk-ua          Ukrainian (Ukraine)           zh-cn          Chinese (Simplified, China)   zh-tw          Chinese (Traditional, Taiwan) The ESD will be downloaded to the Desktop folder. Make note of the file name, you will need it for the next step.
5.	Create the ISO file from the ESD and include VMware video and network drivers (the drivers will be installed by Windows setup so you don’t have to do it later). /Applications/VMware\ Fusion.app/Contents/Library/vmw_esd2iso generateiso --esd "esd-file" --drivers "/Volumes/VMware Tools/svga,/Volumes/VMware Tools/vmxnet3" where esd-file is the name of the ESD file downloaded in the prior steps. Enclose the file name in double quotes if the name contains spaces. The ISO file will be generated in the Desktop folder.
6.	Clean up. Unmount the VMware Tools ISO with the following command: hdiutil detach "/Volumes/VMware Tools" Use the Finder to delete the downloaded ESD file from the Desktop folder (don’t forget to empty the Trash!). The ESD file is no longer needed. .

 

[z0rrigas]

Thanks, working for "Spanish", please fix on app!.

[Technogeezer]

Just for laughs (and to test a hunch where I think the issue is), could someone experiencing these problems please:

• Start Fusion
• Try to download the Windows 11 ARM from Microsoft in the GUI.
• When the process fails, create a quick support bundle Help > Collect Support Information > Quick, and post the generated zipfile here.

I have a hunch that VMware mistakenly translated "Professional" and "Enterprise" in the GUI before feeding them to the vmw_esd2iso command line application (which wants them in English).

[An78toi13ne06]

I can confirm it translate Professional to "Professionnel" (for French).

 

[Technogeezer]

That confirms my suspicions.

VMware messed up by not making this feature a part of the Tech Preview where it had a better chance of being caught. Also, it should be made known to the QA department that they need to do more testing for non-English languages - this isn’t the first time things like this have happened. 

[VMware Community Member]

Hi Paul,

thank you in advance for your support,

i did every step till the 6th, then i launched VMware fusion to create the virtual machine but after specifying the site of the machine the following appeared :

time out

efi network...

and then the boot manager.

the isofile seemed to be correct...

[Technogeezer]

The most common cause of what you're seeing is that you did not set keyboard focus to the virtual machine after powering it on. Unless you do that, the key pressed on the keyboard will not be recognized by the VM and the Windows installer. If the key press isn't recognized by the VM within about 5 seconds, the installer will assume that you want to boot from the "hard drive". Which will fail because there's no operating system installed on the hard drive.

Make sure that after you power up the VM and see the "Press any key" prompt you do 1 of the two following things to set keyboard focus to the VM:

• Click the mouse pointer in the VM's window.
• Type Command-G 

And then press any key on the keyboard. The Windows installer should then boot. 

You need to perform setting the keyboard focus and pressing the key on the keyboard within about 5 seconds. The time to do this is set by the WIndows installer and you can't change that from Fusion.

 

[VMware Community Member]

Hi Paul,

I solved, it was very simple but sometimes is difficult...

thank you very much for your support

that was very kind of you i really appreciated it..

as they say in Friuli

Mandi!

Paolo

[VMware Community Member]

I use macOS feature to use the VMware Fusion in English and it works. Very easy https://support.apple.com/es-es/guide/mac-help/mh26684/mac

 

I spend some time withs this. I try to download by terminal and also didn't work. I try https://github.com/Technogeezer50/esd2iso also but it didn't work , becuase it needs other apps and Xcode...

 

[Technogeezer]

It appears that you are running macOS in a non-English system language (es-es in the URLs indicates to me that you're running macOS in Spanish). 

The command line version of the esd2iso utility bundled with Fusion 12.5 should work using the procedure posted in a prior reply. Can you capture your output in the Terminal that shows what commands you executed and what the output of those commands were?

 

[VMware Community Member]

It works perfectly, thanks!!!!! Gracias Pablo