Accessing old Fusion files to new machine

[Joel Warren]

I had an old virtual machine that was running on an Intel Mac. It won't run on my new Apple Silicon Mac. I'm told It is possible for a new virtual machine to extract data from that old one. How do I do it?

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[Technogeezer]

There are a few ways to do that. Assuming you still have the old Intel Mac still available, the easiest way is to start up the virtual machine on the old Mac, and connect a USB drive that's usable on a Windows PC (that is, formatted with a FAT, ExFAT or NTFS file system) to the virtual machine. You can use Fusion's USB pass-through capabilities to do that.  Then copy the files you want to save to the USB drive from inside the virtual machine using File Explorer or some other utility. 

When done, remove the drive from the virtual machine on the old Mac.

Now connect that drive to the new Mac, power the virtual machine on, and use Fusion's USB pass-through to connect that drive to the VM (similar to what you did on the old one). The drive should now appear in VM. Copy the files from that drive to the VM using File Explorer.

There are other ways to accomplish this which are more complicated, but I thought I'd start with the easiest. 

If you no longer have that old Intel Mac available, I can walk you through an alternative which involves adding the old virtual machine's virtual disk to the new one as as second hard drive. That process is a little more complicated, so I thought I'd start with an easier one first.

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Paul Rockwell (technogeezer)
vExpert 2026 (3x)
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[Technogeezer]

Here's another way.

Before starting this process, make a copy of the virtual machine to another hard disk and make sure you know the encryption password for the new virtual machine. You should also make sure that you have enough disk space to hold a second copy of the virtual disk from the old VM. 

I'm also assuming that you have not used BitLocker encryption in the VM you ran on the Intel Mac. 

Note that we will have to remove the Trusted Platform Module device and encryption from the virtual machine to perform this process. We will add them back in before we power up the VM.

1. Make sure the virtual machine from the old Intel Mac is available to the new Mac. For example, restore it to your new Mac from a a backup of the virtual machine taken on your old Mac. Or transfer the virtual machine over the network to your new Mac. Make note of what folder you placed the old VM in.
2. Shut down the virtual machine on your new Mac if it's already running. Leave the Fusion GUI running.
3. Right click on the new virtual machine in the Virtual Machine Library and select "Settings...". The Settings window will open.
4. Click on the Trusted Platform Module device.
5. In the Trusted Platform Module devide window, click "Remove Trusted Platform Module". You'll be returned to the main Settings window.
6. Now click on "Encryption". The encryption settings window will now appear.
7. Click on "The virtual machine is not encrypted" to remove encryption from the VM. You will be asked at this point to provide the current password for the VM. Once you enter the password and click "OK" the process will begin to decrypt the virtual machine. Wait for it to complete.
8. When the decryption finishes, a confirmation dialog appears. Click OK
9. Now click on the "Add Device" text (it's actually a button) at the top right of the window.
10. A window appears saying "Choose a device to add". Select "Existing Hard Disk" and click the "Add..." button.
11.  A file selection window will now appear. Use it to locate the virtual machine you copied over from the old Intel Mac, Then drill into it like it was a folder to reveal the component files of the VM. (Unlike the FInder, this window will allow you to "see" inside the old virtual machine without having to use "Show Package Contents".
12. You should see all files grayed out except a a virtual disk file - usually called Virtual Disk.vmdk. Click once on that file to highlight it.
13. Make sure that the option to "Make a separate copy of the virtual disk" is selected. That will make a copy of the original disk, leaving the old one intact.
14. Click the "Open" button. 
15. A window will appear with the name that will be assigned to the copied virtual disk in the new virtual machine. Click "Apply" to start the copy procedure.  Wait for the "Copying Disk..." to finish.
16. When that finishes, click "Show All..." at the top left of the window. You'll be returned to the main Settings window.
17. Click on "Encryption" once again. The encryption settings window will now appear.
18. Select "Only the files needed to support a virtual TPM will be encrypted". You will then be prompted for a new password for the VM. You can use the same password as you had before. You also can select "Remember Password" so that you don't have to type in the password to start up the VM. Click "OK" and the virtual machine will be re-encrypted.
19. Click "Add Device..." at the top right of the window.
20. In the "Choose a device to add", click on "Trusted Platform Module" then click the "Add" button.
21. You can now close the Settings window. 

You can now power on your VM. If you used a Windows Hello PIN to log into Windows, you will be asked to reset it. Follow the instructions given by Windows on how to reset it. 

Once you've signed into Windows, open the Settings app, and select System > Storage > Advanced Storage Settings > Disks & Volumes.  You should see your system hard drive as a VMware Virtual NVMe disk as Disk 0. Your old VM's disk drive will appear as another VMware Virtual NVMe disk as Disk 1. 

Click on the Properties button next to the Basic data partition of type NTFS with no label or drive letter (the one that appears immediately after the FAT32 volume with no label and is described as an EFI system partition). The properties for that partition will open.

Click on the "Change drive letter" and assign a drive letter to this disk. By default it should offer to assign "E:". Click "OK".

You can close the Settings app, and open File Explorer.

You should now see your old VM's system drive as the E: drive:

You should now be able to drill into the Users folder in that second hard drive, find your old user's home folder, and locate any data files you wish to move/copy to the new VM. Note that you may get a dialog saying that you don't have permissions to access that old home folder. You will be asked if you want to change the permissions to allow you access, and you should allow that. 

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Paul Rockwell (technogeezer)
vExpert 2026 (3x)
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[Joel Warren]

Ay-yi-yi. Let's stop at square 1. I foolishly turned in the old Mac when
I bought this one, If you've got any ideas in that case, I'd love to
hesr. I did a data migration, so if I'm lucky I still have what I need.

[Technogeezer]

Ouch. A couple of thoughts.

Do you have an external disk you used for Time Machine backups on that old Mac? You might get lucky and find a backup of the VM there. You might also run a search on your new Mac (instead of a file name, search for "kind:vmbundle"). 

Similarly, are you using Time Mchine on your new Mac? If the migration moved your old VM, it might be in the first backup taken after the migration. 

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Paul Rockwell (technogeezer)
vExpert 2026 (3x)
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[Joel Warren]

Checking it out, Paul, but I paid a tech who came onto my machine for an
hour and tried a lot of things to no avail I may be screwed. I'll let you
know.

PS he also said it was **** not to keep my old machine. Threw out the baby
with the bathwater.

[Joel Warren]

Where did your Companion Guide go to? I see the intro, and then it goes
right to comments, but I don't see aa link to the actual Guide.

Q: So if the new Fusion does not have a sharing feature (hard to believe
because it is so critical) how does one access Mac files from Fusion?

[Technogeezer]

The Companion Guide is still there. The guide is an attachment to the intro:

To access Mac files from a Fusion virtual machine running Windows ARM:

• Configure the folder you wish to share with Windows users on the Mac. Open the Mac User Guide (from the Finder menu bar, click on Help > Mac User Guide and search for the topic "Share Mac files with Windows users". You'll see a summary of the instructions at the top of the search results, click on it for the full article with more in-depth steps.
• When modifying the WINS network settings as requested in the article, note that the default workgroup for a Windows computers is "WORKGROUP". You may wish to make sure that the Mac is set to the same value.
• Also note the WINS host name. You'll use that to connect to the share. 
• Now see the topic in the "See also" section of that article entitled "Connect to a Mac from a Windows computer".
• You may not be able to browse for the network in the Windows File Explorer. Instead type \\wins-hostname in FIle Explorer's bar where the folder hierarchy is usually found. (wins-hostname is the name of the Mac that's displayed in the WINS properties of the Mac's network). Then press "Return".

 Here's an example from my system where the WINS hostname of the mac is "Upstairs":

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Paul Rockwell (technogeezer)
vExpert 2026 (3x)
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[Technogeezer]

Once you can access the share, you can always map it to a drive letter so that it's more easily accessible. You probably want to have Windows remember the credentials you're using to connect to the Mac so that it's easier to reconnect when you shut down and restart the virtual machine. 

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Paul Rockwell (technogeezer)
vExpert 2026 (3x)
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[Joel Warren]

So on a related subject, looking at my Applications folder on my Mac, I see a number of my old Windows apps that I ran on Windows 10.  Any way to revive them? 

Plus, it seems the only way to log onto this forum is through Fusion.  Am I right? Otherwise it just tells me that I don't have sufficient privileges to access the site.

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[Technogeezer]

> looking at my Applications folder on my Mac, I see a number of my old Windows apps that I ran on Windows 10.  Any way to revive them? 

Sorry, but no there isn't. This is another of the features that are available for Windows VMs on Intel Macs vs. Apple Silicon Macs.

Have a look at the following Broadcom knowledge base article https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article/315609/features-of-windows-11-vm-on-mac-with-in.html . It contains other features that aren't available when running Fusion on Apple Silicon Macs.

> it seems the only way to log onto this forum is through Fusion.

You shouldn't need Fusion to log into the Broadcom Community site. You can go to https://community.broadcom.com and sign into the site using your Broadcom account username and password. (You may be prompted for a security code that will be sent to your email inbox).

Once signed in,  you can use "My Communities" (it's found under the red horizontal bar at the top of the main Broadcom communities page).  to list the Broadcom communities you have signed up for,. The Fusion community (this one) should be listed there (you wouldn't be able to  post here unless you had signed up for it...).  

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Paul Rockwell (technogeezer)
vExpert 2026 (3x)
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