Latest Fusion crashes immediately after launch on macOS Sequoia (15.x)

[Andrei Dica]

Hello everyone,

I keep having a recurring problem on my M1 Ultra Mac Studio whenever I try to launch Vmware Fusion 13.x. Whenever I try to launch the VMware Fusion app instantly crashes. Sometimes a window like this pops up:

I cannot interact with this window as the main app instantly crashes, and the option to reopen or not to reopen the windows cannot be accessed by clicking or with the keyboard. The app can be force quit though as that is the only option but relaunching vmware Fusion brings me back in this vicious circle.

Things I tried so far:

• Deleted the app and reinstalling it.
• Moving all of the .vmwarevm files (virtual OSes)
• Deleting all of the .vmwarevm files and launch from scratch.
• Manually find everything related to Vmware fusion on the Mac and deleting it and then install from fresh.
• Trying to find a .plist file in the app container to see if I can make the app forget the last state.
• Upgrading the Vmware Fusion to a new lesser version. 
• Downgrading Vmware Fusion to 13.0
• Fiddling with app permissions in System Settings -> Privacy & Security (toggling on/off switches, removing and adding the app back in Accessibility and other parts) 

nothing that I could come up with really worked and this is driving me nuts as I can't access any of my VMs.

Can anyone shed some light into this? 

For the sake of transparency I'm posting below the most relevant parts of the crash dump:

Date/Time:        2024-12-04 15:09:13.576 +0200
End time:         2024-12-04 15:09:39.265 +0200
OS Version:       macOS 15.1.1 (Build 24B91)
Architecture:     arm64e
Report Version:   53
Incident Identifier: E3C7CE88-C428-4348-BA76-E4A8514D93F2

Data Source:      Stackshots
Shared Cache:     F66BAC4E-1E78-38AF-B867-C1CF5DAA0302 slid base address 0x185064000, slide 0x5064000 (System Primary)
Shared Cache:     925CBA88-7AC0-3095-988E-CA4192191087 slid base address 0x187df8000, slide 0x7df8000 (DriverKit)
Shared Cache:     5C2CCE52-5D17-37C6-A12B-53C63FFC4453 slid base address 0x7ff808ce4000, slide 0x8ce4000 (Rosetta)

Command:          VMware Fusion
Path:             /Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/MacOS/VMware Fusion
Identifier:       com.vmware.fusion
Version:          13.6.1 (24319021)
Team ID:          EG7KH642X6
Is First Party:   No
Beta Identifier:  C32379DA-F7E8-5F4A-97F4-1E00EE1C3BDA
Architecture:     arm64
Parent:           launchd [1]
PID:              71886
Time Since Fork:  35s

Event:            hang
Duration:         25.69s
Duration Sampled: 1.10s (process was unresponsive for 25 seconds before sampling)
Steps:            11 (100ms sampling interval)

Hardware model:   Mac13,2
Active cpus:      20
HW page size:     16384
VM page size:     16384

Time Since Boot:  1208101s
Time Awake Since Boot: 1208101s
Time Since Wake:  n/a (machine hasn't slept)

Fan speed:        1336 rpm
Total CPU Time:   20.006s (56.6G cycles, 73.1G instructions, 0.77c/i)
Advisory levels:  Battery -> 2, User -> 2, ThermalPressure -> 0, Combined -> 2
Free disk space:  4089.18 GB/7449.23 GB, low space threshold 3072 MB
Vnodes Available: 61.23% (161130/263168)

Process:          VMware Fusion [71886] [unique pid 829406]
UUID:             F56A207F-CAA4-3C29-8CBD-32ED205D0E4F
Path:             /Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/MacOS/VMware Fusion
Identifier:       com.vmware.fusion
Version:          13.6.1 (24319021)
Team ID:          EG7KH642X6
Is First Party:   No
Beta Identifier:  C32379DA-F7E8-5F4A-97F4-1E00EE1C3BDA
Shared Cache:     F66BAC4E-1E78-38AF-B867-C1CF5DAA0302 slid base address 0x185064000, slide 0x5064000 (System Primary)
Architecture:     arm64
Parent:           launchd [1]
UID:              502
Footprint:        422.82 MB
Time Since Fork:  35s
Num samples:      11 (1-11)
CPU Time:         1.000s (3.0G cycles, 3.3G instructions, 0.91c/i)
Note:             Unresponsive for 25 seconds before sampling
Num threads:      11
Note:             2 idle work queue threads omitted

[Technogeezer]

Normally I'd say to collect a support bundle, but you can't get the Fusion GUI started to do that.

Can you collect the following files/folders manually and put them in a zip file?

folder: /Library/Logs/VMware

file: /Library/Logs/VMware\ Fusion\ Services.log

folder ~/Library/Logs/VMware\ Fusion 

A couple of questions, however:

Can you create another user account and try to execute the VMware Fusion application from that account? If it runs from that account, there's something suspect with your user account.

Was this working at any time in the past? If it was, what has changed or has anything notable event occured since that time? That includes if you ran some kind of "cleaning" or "optimization" utillity?

When you removed Fusion, did you get all of the files mentioned in KB article How to uninstall VMware Fusion manually

You can verify that you got all those files by using the script found here: https://community.broadcom.com/vmware-cloud-foundation/viewdocument/script-to-check-if-all-remnants-of?CommunityKey=0c3a2021-5113-4ad1-af9e-018f5da40bc0&tab=librarydocuments

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- Paul (technogeezer)
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[Andrei Dica]

Ok...dunno what happend with my previous answer and can't remember if I managed to post it or not but here is my COMPLETE answer:

1. Collected all log files and attached them here: https://cutt.ly/ieCnTQnq What I saw is that one particular file, fusion.log is ~150MB in size. Pretty big and filled with probably spammed error logs.
2. Under a fresh user account Fusion launches just fine.
3. It used to work a couple of months ago under Fusion 13. After the 13.0.1 update or around that time it stopped working. I'm not implying it's the update that caused this...much more probable something different that went wrong. Also I don't use any cleaning or optimization utilities in macOS.
4. I just again removed Fusion 13.6.1 and made sure to remove all the files and folders in the article. Also ran the script and it returned positive message meaning 'it appears Fusion is not installed'. 
5. Reinstalled 13.6.1. I got to the licensing window and as soon as I clicked done the spinning ball appeared and Vmware froze. I force quit the app and then the window appeared again saying the message from my original post and I'm back into the vicious loop.
   
   

[Andrei Dica]

Ok so a last Hail Mary attempt was to disconnect everything connected to the Mac, USB, TB etc. Everything except the display ofc. With al disconnected completely remove vmware. Checked with the script that all was removed. Passed. Rebooted. Reinstalled 13.6.1 and same behavior: reached the licensing screen, click done and app froze spinning ball and everything. At this point I give up. 

[Technogeezer]

I'm seeing a ton of messages being thrown in the fusion.log file about an APC UPS device. Did you disconnect that?

The fact that Fusion is launching with another user on the same machine indicates that there's something related to your user profile that's blocking Fusion from running properly. 

Also, some of the vmware-vmfusion.log files indicate a problem shortly after you attempt to launch a Windows 11 VM. Is (or was) the Fusion GUI up and running at this point - and the problem starts after you started the Fusion VM. Or do you have the VM (/Users/su/Virtual Machines.localized/Windows 11 64-bit Arm.vmwarevm) configured to auto-start on Fusion start?

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- Paul (technogeezer)
------------------------------

[Andrei Dica]

Yep! As per my above email I disconnected everything except the display. Then did a clean removal. Rebooted. Reinstalled vmware. Same behavior. Meanwhile again...everything was still disconnected expect the display and ofc the bluetooth input devices (keyboard and trackpad).

I completely agree that something is wrong in my user settings or configs but what can it be?! All peripherals were disconnected. Complete removal and reinstall didn't work. I have no custom profiles installed except the Proton Mail one that's needed for the full encryption to work. What is very strange is the fact that even after complete removal of the install files (as per the articles) the app crashes at launch and after it's force quitted it relaunches with the same window popup from my original post...as if it indicates that vmware still had some config files lingering or plist files or whatever, other than the ones from the articles, otherwise I can't understand how the app states that it was force quit when opening windows and offer the possibility to reopen them. In the past when I had an app that misbehaved like that, I had to manually search all the config or plist files stored in /Library/... and ~/Library/... and after getting rid of those the app started with a fresh start. Meanwhile Vmware for some reason is stuck in this vicious mode irrespective of the fact that I 'deeply' remove the app or not. 

As for your last question: Yes, I remember the last time it worked was after a prompt in Win 11 guest OS that got updated to 24H2, and after the reboot a prompt said to updated vmware tools and I agreed. It didn't finish the update of the tools or maybe it did (sorry that happened quite while back) and it rebooted and soon after it crashed and got stuck like this ever since.