Copied VM from Mac to Backup Mac both use Professional 25H2u1 wont open on backup

[Andre Periana]

The VM disk had read write permissions however the files in the VM Package i had to open one by one in Finder , add user and change to Read Write. Same user on Main an backup Mac

Is there a better way to do this

-------------------------------------------

[Technogeezer]

(edited for clarification and to fix a couple of errors)

A suggestion: Since you're using a Mac, you are using VMware Fusion, not VMware Workstation. A better place to post this question would be the Fusion Community forums. That's where people that use Fusion and the Mac hang out. 

Since I do use both Fusion and Workstation, here's what I think might be going on.

I'm assuming that whatever you used to copy the virtual machine over to the backup Mac maintained the permissions the same as on the host Mac. Since the Mac uses UNIX-style user IDs (UID) and group IDs (GID) for user accounts, file permissions are set by UID/GID and not by user name. It may be possible for a user account on one Mac to have its UID different than on another Mac even though the account name may be the same. This could impact files being transferred from one Mac to another because the owner UIDs don't match.

It also appears that changing permissions on a VM bundle in the FInder does not propagate that change to the files within the bundle. Not sure if that's a macOS Finder bug or not.

Using the command line may be the easiest way to fix this if you're willing to try it. 

Note: make a copy of the virtual machine bundle before making any changes, and also quit the VMware Fusion GUI. 

Here's an example assuming that 

• your "short" username is "myusername" on the new machine. You can verify what your short username is by opening the Terminal and executing the following command:

  echo $USER

• The virtual machine bundle is called "Windows 11.vmwarevm"
• The virtual machine bundle is found in the user's default Virtual Machines folder "/Users/myusername/Virtual Machines.localized"

Given the assumptions in my example, he following command executed in the Terminal will reset the permissions of the VM so that the UID associated with user myusername now owns the bundle and all files contained in it. This should fix the problem since file owners typically have read-write access to files. 

sudo chown -R myusername "/Users/myusername/Virtual Machines.localized/Windows 11.vmwarevm"

 The double quotes are required since the file names have spaces in them.

You can verify that the change has taken place by issuing the following command:

ls -alR "/Users/myusername/Virtual Machines.localized/Windows 11.vmwarevm"

All of the files should have user myusername listed as the file owner (and you can verify this in the Finder as well). 

You will need to change this command based on your user name, the name of the virtual machine bundle file, and the folder where the virtual machine bundle is stored.

------------------------------
Paul Rockwell (technogeezer)
vExpert 2026 (3x)
------------------------------