Here's an example of what you should see if you copied the entire VM folder (which includes configuration files and the virtual disks) from an Intel Mac (or PC running VMware Workstation) to an Apple Silicon Mac.
I copied a Windows 8.1 VM from a PC, then tried to open and power it on under Fusion on Apple Silcon. This is the error message that was generated by Fusion:
The VM fails to power on at all.
Now, if you create a new virtual machine on ARM and use the old virtual disks in that new VM, something very different happens:
I created a generic VM and used the existing virtual disks from the Windows VM as my virtual disk. After powering this VM on, the error message doesn't appear - that's because since the VM configuration is telling Fusion that it's booting an ARM virtual machine.
This happens because the EFI firmware in the VM can't find a bootable system on the hard drive or the CD/ROM drive. It then falls through to trying a network boot and eventually fails.
Why? Fusion created an ARM VM, but the disk contained an Intel operating system. The EFI boot code wants to find a boot loader and operating system that's built for the ARM architecture. Didn't find it.
This is the equivalent of transplanting a phyiscal disk from an Intel machine into one that contains an ARM CPU. Or trying to boot ISO media that's built for Intel x86_64 processors on an ARM processor.
By building the VM the way that I did, I overrode the protections against trying to boot an incompatible architecture operating system. At VM creation time, if you choose use an existing virtual disk for your VM, Fusion doesn't perform any checks of the contents of the virtual disk. It just makes the disk device accessible as if you plugged it into a physical machine.
Original Message:
Sent: Jul 09, 2025 11:28 AM
From: Technogeezer
Subject: Fusion 13.6.3 won't run older VM
Robert, usually when Fusion on Apple Silicon is asked to run a VM that has been copied from an Intel Mac, it throws a warning message about an incompatible CPU architecture. The Intel guest operating systems have a different type in the .vmx (VM configuration) file than the ARM guest operating systems. Fusion throws the error if it finds a mismatch in the host CPU architecture vs. the guest operating system type found in the VM configuration.
i wonder why that message wasn't displayed in your case? I'm assuming that you copied the entire contents of the VM from your old system and not just the virtual disk (.VMDK) files.
The log files from the VM (found in the virtual machines' bundle folder with a .log extension) may give a clue as to what might have caused the error message not to appear.
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- Paul (technogeezer)
vExpert 2025
Original Message:
Sent: Jul 09, 2025 10:58 AM
From: RobertII
Subject: Fusion 13.6.3 won't run older VM
Thank you, Paul (technogeezer): you explanation was clear and helpful. And embarassing: I feel I've had to be told why my CD ROM drive will not play a floppy disk. Blush.
I do, though, have a question: why didn't Fusion just tell me what the problem was?
I think you've said that there are, in effect, separate families of VMs: in particular, those that run on Intel processors and those that run on Apple processors (but I guess there could be other distinctions, too). So any given installation of VMWare can only ever run VMs that belong to one of those families -- those VMs that will work with the processor in the computer hosting the VMWare. And any VMWare installation must know (or be able to find out) which family of VM it can run.
So at the point when VMWare is (first) asked to run a VM, why <expletive deleted> does it not spend a fraction of a millisecond to CHECK what family the VM is in and explicitly report/highlight any problem it finds? That would have saved both of us a chunk of time...
Anyway, thanks again, Paul.
Robert.
Original Message:
Sent: Jul 08, 2025 01:03 PM
From: Technogeezer
Subject: Fusion 13.6.3 won't run older VM
Two questions for you:
- By "new Mac mini", do you mean a Mini released on or after 2020 that contains an M-series cpu?
- Was that old mac Mini an Intel Mac (that is, a 2018 or older Mini) - my assumption is "Yes" because you are running Fusion 12.2.4, and that version did not support anything but Intel Macs.
If the answer to both of those questions is "Yes", the answer to your question:
How do I get 13.6.3 to run the VM that 12.2.4 runs?
is: you can't.
Why doesn't this "just work"?
Again, assuming that the two questions answered above are "yes", it doesn't work because you've changed processor architectures from Intel on your old Mac to ARM on your new Mac. The VMs you built on the Intel Mac run operating systems that require an Intel processor. The M-series processors are not Intel processors, They are ARM processors. Virtualization requires the guest operating system to run the same CPU architecture as the host system. Fusion on Apple Silicon will only provide virtual machines compatible with the ARM processors. It doesn't emulate an Intel architecture that would allow your old VMs to run.
And no, Rosetta 2 won't make them run. Rosetta doesn't work for virtualization (that's from Apple's developer documentation). There's not enough functionality in Rosetta that would allow a full Intel operating system to run in an emulated mode.
Your option in this case would be to build a new Rocky Linux 9 or 10 VM using the ARM architecture installation ISO (aarch64 or arm64) instead of the Intel architecture (x86_64 or amd64). You can then move any files from the old VM to the new one by adding the old VM's virtual disk(s) as additional hard drives to the newly built Linux ARM VM).
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- Paul (technogeezer)
vExpert 2025
Original Message:
Sent: Jul 08, 2025 11:51 AM
From: RobertII
Subject: Fusion 13.6.3 won't run older VM
I have VMware Fusion 12.2.4 running a Linux (Rocky) VM on a rather aged Mac Mini.
I now have a new Mac Mini, on which I have installed Fusion 13.6.3. without selecting any special options.
But when I copy the directory containing the VM to the new machine, it will not run. When I try to boot it, I get messages saying that EFI VMWare Virtual NVME Namespace and SATA Drive are failing, followed by "EFI Network.Start PXE over IPv4", which just hangs.
I have never seen any mention of EFI while creating or running the VM under Fusion 12.2.4, so I do not believe the VM knows anything about it.
What is going on? Why does a VM created by an older version of VMWare not run in the new version?
If, running the VM in 13.6.3, I "Power on to Firmware", and "Enter Setup", there is an option to "boot from a file". However, the the list of options is uninterpretable: there are no file names, just strings of low-level "stuff" like
[PciRoot (0x0)/Pci (0x15, 0x0)/Pci(0x0,0x0)/MAC (000C29D56372,0,0).....
I've tried a couple of them, but they just say "Start PXE over IPv4", and then fail.
Again, what is going on gone?
How do I get 13.6.3 to run the VM that 12.2.4 runs? Why doesn't this "just work"?