Fusion 13.6 Update has damaged my BootCamp Windows 10 boot :( Please help.

[WindCatcher]

Fusion 13.6 Update has damaged my BootCamp Windows 10 boot :( Please help.

I have used Windows Bootcamp partition daily in Fusion until the 13.6 update yesterday.

Bootcamp partition stopped booting in Fusion with error below:

Disk '/Users/macbook/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/Virtual Machines/backup/Bootcamp.vmware vm/Boot Camp.vmdk' has virtual sector sizes (4096 logical and 4096 physical) that are incompatible with the backend device.

One of the parameters supplied is invalid Cannot open the disk '/Users/macbook/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/Virtual Machines/backup/Bootcamp.vmware vm/Boot Camp.vmdk' or one of the snapshot disks it depends on. Module 'Disk' power on failed. Failed to start the virtual machine

I tried to remove Bootcamp Windows and add it again which NOT possible :(

Error while adding sais:

If another virtual machine is using the disk, it must be powered off first :(

No other VM is using the disk, all NTFS mounting solutions are uninstalled, same error happens with mounted BOOTCAMP partition and with unmounted BOOTCAMP partition :(

Boot Camp volume preprocessing failed.

You may not be able to boot your Boot Camp volume as a virtual machine.

After running VM created with errors it sais:

The Partition table is invalid

Cannot open the disk '/Users/macbook/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/Virtual Machines/Boot Camp/Boot Camp.vmwarevm/Boot Camp.vmdk' or one of the snapshot disks it depends on.
Module 'Disk' power on failed.
Failed to start the virtual machine

Any ideas how to try and repair it???

Bootcamp boots fine but no way to add it or run it under MacOS in Fusion...

[Adam Hall]

Experienced the same issue on an Intel Mac running Sonoma and Win10 in bootcamp. I appear to have repaired things by reinstalling the previous version of Fusion. Steps I went through (some of which may have been extraneous):

Booted bootcamp and went through the litany...chkdsk /r, sfc /scannow, and dism.

Booted back to Mac and uninstalled Fusion 13.6 and installed previous version of Fusion (13.5.2 I think) and tried to boot up the virtual bootcamp machine.

Did not work. Finally removed the bootcamp vm from the library and re-added it. May have done a reboot in between removing and adding.

Just now finishing up uninstalling VMware tools in bootcamp and reinstalling from the previous version of Fusion but I can boot up once again and appear to be stable. 

Best of luck!

[Christian Stricker]

Exactly the same issue here. My configuration: Intel MBP 2017 with Sonoma 14.6.1. It looks as if there is a problem with how fusion 13.6 "sees" bootcamp. I can boot it fine natively, but not as a VM in 13.6. Had to downgrade to 13.5.2 again - after trying all the "reasonable" things that you did as well. I hope Broadcom can fix this soon.

[James Edwards]

I experienced exactly what you described after updating my MacBook Pro (i7 processor) running Sonoma 14.1.

Hoping for a resolution

[Jeff Wasilko]

I've got the same issue with Bootcamp. Can't believe this wasn't tested. The image still boots ok via Bootcamp, so I'll download 13.5.2 and see if that works.

[Jeff Wasilko]

I've got the same issue. Rolling back to 13.5.2 resolved it for now. 

[WindCatcher]

Thanks Adam,

I tried shorter version of your solution.

My steps to fix:

Removed all virtual machines from Fusion

Uninstall Fusion 13.6

Download and install Fusion 13,5,2

Import Bootcamp Windows 10 which went without errors

Couldnt start at first

Restart my Mac

Then VM Fusion Bootcamp Win10 started and seems ok

Reinstall VMTools just in case (not sure if needed)

Thanks

Michal

[WindCatcher]

Also one more question for active Windows Bootcamp Fusion users

At the moment when I close Fusion app there is long wait for windows to shutdown.

Is there a way to quickly sleep/hibernate Windows in Fusionwhen not used and how do you configure it??

[Technogeezer]

From the Fusion documentation:

Fusion does not support suspending and resuming in Boot Camp virtual machines. Suspending and resuming rely on being able to save a known state that will not change. You can boot natively into Windows in the Boot Camp partition. When you do so, the known state is lost and data loss occurs.

You may also want to see the following post (It's old but still relevant):

https://community.broadcom.com/vmware-cloud-foundation/communities/community-home/digestviewer/viewthread?MessageKey=8a18c46b-80f3-4bc0-ab1a-227b35fa3973&CommunityKey=0c3a2021-5113-4ad1-af9e-018f5da40bc0

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- Paul (technogeezer)
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[Adam Hall]

Glad you were able simplify the solution! Admittedly when I saw an error saying my boot table was corrupted I went into a little overkill on the damage control with chkdsk, sfc, and DISM.

[acywong]

Thanks for your suggested solution. I just want to confirm the following:

1. Is it necessary to remove all the virtual machines before uninstalling Fusion 13.6?
2. After installing Fusion 13.5.2, can we reuse the previous virtual machine or create a new one?

Thanks.

[Sleestak]

All I did was delete the 13.6 file then install the 13.5.2 and was back up and running.

[luk walker]

How did you cancel the file? Thanks

[luk walker]

How did you delete the file? Just moving the app to the trash? Thanks

[Sleestak]

That's exactly what I did.  I didn't try to look for hidden files like preferences or anything like that.  Just moved the application to the trash. Didn't even empty the trash.  As a matter of fact it still sits in my trash and version 13.5.2 runs just fine.  Couldn't ask for an easier downgrade process.

[Sleestak]

Having the same issue on my Intel MBP.  Everything was fine until the update.  Also hoping for a fix so I can finally make the jump to Sequoia. 

[Technogeezer]

VMware's QA has taken a steep decline lately:

• Boot Camp VMs were obviously not tested at all with the Fusion 13.6 release. This is an obvious regression that any cursory test of the function would have revealed.
• The Fusion 13.5 feature to download Windows from Microsoft in the Fusion GUI didn't work for non-English systems. It took a update (2+ months later) to fix the problem. Obviously was never tested. 

It isn't just limited to Fusion:

• Multiple changes to the VMware SVGA driver for Linux were released by Broadcom to the Linux kernel source tree that broke VMs that did not have 3D acceleration enabled for 3 kernel releases. Obviously no extensive testing was done by Broadcom before making the changes public.
• VMware Workstation 17.6 users whose system languages aren't English are finding they can't install the product. Another obvious fail to test the product with non-English system languages.

I think they rushed Fusion 13,6 and Workstation 17.6 out the door to deal with a high priority security issue. They didn't take the time to properly test anything else. And it appears that their development methodology is severely broken - what's up with the unit and regressions testing that's allowing egregious bugs to make it into a released product. 

Broadcom/VMware wants to sell subscriptions to the desktop hypervisor products under the guise of providing better funding to their development and funding support. But something's wrong - they continue to release bug-ridden versions anyway. I wouldn't feel like paying for a product when I have to deal with bugs that should have been discovered with a minimum of testing?

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- Paul (technogeezer)
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[Sleestak]

FWIW, I can confirm that downgrading back to 3.5.2 has let me back into my instance of Windows 11.

[WindCatcher]

Good to know that W11 has the same problem.

I was thinking about updating my Windows to 11 as a step to make it work with 13.6 but downgrading Fusion is faster workaround.

What about sleeping and hibernation in Windows 11 while using Fusion Bootcamp VM.

Is there a way to sleep Windows 11 and close Fusion or not possible like in W10?

[Sleestak]

I found that importing bootcamp and running as a virtual machine was a better route vs using Fusion to run my bootcamp partition.  I've been running that way for a while.  Runs great with a SSD and nice thing is that my instance of Windows gets backed up to my Time Machine drive because it's a file.  So If my drive ever takes a dump and I have to replace it I don't have to worry about partitioning the drive and dealing with reinstalling Windows.

To your question about sleep and hibernation, seems to work well with windows 11. But not sure if you're talking about hibernation or suspending Windows.  My instance goes into suspend mode if I leave it for too long.  However, I find windows boots faster than bringing it back from hibernation/suspend.  Also, I've found that you can get into trouble if Windows is in suspend mode and you install an update to Fusion.  Better to just shut down Windows when you're done running it, imo.

I have not launched my boot camp partition in a long long time.  Kind of just keep it around incase my Mac partition craps out or has issues and I really need to boot up the computer.  If you have a decent amount of RAM (my MBP has 32 GB) and drive space (especially if you have a SSD) I recommend trying to import your bootcamp and see how that runs. 

Hope this answers your question.

[Technogeezer]

While runnung Windows as a VM has its advantages, the big advantage of runnung Windows natively on BootCamp is for Windows to have direct access to hardware devices such as the GPU (e.g for gaming).

It certainly is convenient to be able to have that "bare metal" performance when you need it, as well as the ability to fire Windows up as a VM while runnung macOS. 

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- Paul (technogeezer)
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[Sleestak]

Totally get that.  From a business use perspective the VM route runs great, surprising well in fact.  But if you need gaming performance, I would do bootcamp.

[Prajakta Malla]

Hello

The engineering team is working on addressing this issue.

Regards

[srobadelic]

Thank you for this response from 10 days ago. It should be noted for everyone who has reverted from 13.6 to 13.5 that there is a vulnerability (VMSA-2024-0018:VMware Fusion update addresses a code execution vulnerability (CVE-2024-38811)) in versions below 13.6. This is considered a high severity CVSS score 8.8. Downgrading will make your system susceptible to this. Until Broadcom fixes this urgent issue.

[srobadelic]

So this message was 23 days ago and still no update has been released. When will the issues be resolved?

[Technogeezer]

I wish I could give you a better answer than "VMware doesn't comment on the content or timing of future releases". That has been the case long before Broadcom bought out VMware. They've also got a not-so-small problem with Windows 11 ARM 24H2 on ARM that they need to get fixed as well. 

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- Paul (technogeezer)
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[Technogeezer]

VMware just released Fusion 13.6.1.  The release notes state that this issue has been fixed. You might want to upgrade to 13.6.1 and see if the issue still exists for you.

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- Paul (technogeezer)
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[Sleestak]

The update to 13.6.1 appears to be working for me seems to have fixed the issue.  Installed and running Win11 23H2 so far without any issues.

[Timothy Campbell]

I had this issue (BootCamp volume not recognized as valid) when I upgraded to Fusion 13.6.  I had to downgrade to 13.5.2 as a work-around to get my BootCamp VM working again.

I saw that VMware released 13.6.1 - reporting that it fixes "issues reported by the community" (there are a couple of issues so I wasn't sure it fixed THIS issue).  I went ahead and tested it and ... it is working!  

I would upgrade to 13.6.1 and you should be able to use BootCamp VMs again.

As for the issue about being asked if you "moved" or "copied" a VM ... I noticed that when I upgraded to macOS Sequoia.  The "fix" was to go into the Mac's System Settings -> WiFi -> select your active wifi network name from the list -> Details...

There is a feature called "WiFi Private Address" -- this changes the mac address presented by your macs wifi interface such that it gives a different mac address to each network (so people can't use your mac address to track you across multiple wifi networks.

You have three choices ... 'off' (uses only the real mac address), 'fixed' (uses a unique mac address for each network but the address it chooses will be consistent each time it uses that same wifi network, or 'rotating' (changes the address each time  you use the network).

VMware stopped asking if I copied or moved the VM once I set this to 'off'.  I did not check to see if the new 13.6.1 is smart enough to detect when the feature is in use and ignore changed mac addresses.

[WindCatcher]

Updated to 13.6.1 tonight and it works ok on Bootcamp Win 10 partition :)