The "old chestnut" of "I copied it or I moved it"

[Bigdave1357]

I've tried searching to find anything recent on this old issue but I'm looking at around a half-million posts that match my searches, so apologies if what I'm about to ask has been recently answered.

It's the old question about being prompted as to whether the VM has been moved or copied when starting.

It's not a big issue for me, obviously I just say "moved" because I have not copied. I'm pretty sure I've seen something about the fact that this occurs when there's a change on the guest network.

So, is there a definitive answer as to how to prevent this, or do we just live with it.

I find that with my guest machine settled in my home office connected to LAN or WAN, where the DHCP is always handing me out the same IP address, I never see the issue. But if I start my VM when my Mac is connected to foreign LAN, I see the prompt.

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[Technogeezer]

Broadcom hasn't documented how it determines that a VM is running on a different system. The suspicions are that it's either the IP address or the MAC address of the Mac host.

Are you connecting via wired Ethernet or Wi-Fi? on those foreign networks?

If it's Wi-Fi, the issue may be due to the "Private Wi-Fi address" setting that's unique to each Wi-FI network you're connecting to. See Apple's documentation https://support.apple.com/en-us/102509 for a better understanding of how that works.

A couple of things to try:

Set each Wi-Fi network's "Private Wi-Fi address" setting to "Off". Note that this setting reduces privacy because it allows you to be tracked across Wi-Fi networks. It still may complain about "copy/moved" if you connect your machine to a foreign network (I don't have a good way to check that out).

A solution also suggested by several sources is to add the following line to the .vmx file:

uuid.action = "keep"

This setting reportedly makes VMware Fusion (or Workstation) "automatically" answer "Moved" if it thinks that something has changed the host that the VM is running on. 

The other thing I'd look at is to go to the Finder and navigate to  Macintosh HD > Library > Application Support > VMware > VMware Fusion > Shared and check that the file vminventory exists and is zero bytes. That file should not contain anything if you have not chosen to save your VM in the /Users/Shared folder (creating a VM that can be shared by multiple users on your Mac). 

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Paul Rockwell (technogeezer)
vExpert 2026 (3x)
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[Bigdave1357]

Thanks Paul.
That pretty much confirms my suspicion. It's the MAC address change triggering things in my case. I can cause the prompt to appear just by cycling the MAC address on my home network. I normally have two connections to it, one wired and one wireless. Usually I'm wired, so the MAC is unchanging. If I disconnect and go walkabout around my home I'm still on a known WiFi so the MAC is a randomised one, but unchanging.
Visiting foreign WiFi will cause a PWA to be used, annd then once more when I return to home, so that's the issue.
The "keep" setting is a useful one to know. This VM is never going anywhere so it's safe to use that.
I did check the shared folder: empty file.
On 15 Apr 2026, at 19:56, Technogeezer via Broadcom <[e-mail]> wrote:

Broadcom hasn't documented how it determines that a VM is running on a different system. The suspicions are that it's either the IP address or the...