Migrate Physical PC to Fusion

[Daniel Schroeder]

Free Fusion 13.6.x Pro is not good when the only available documentation is poor and/or incorrect. I am trying to migrate a Windows 10 PC to an M1 Mac. The release notes for 13 have only one sentence that migration of a physical PC is possible, but no verbiage on how. But technical support gave me a clue and said to look in the Fusion 12 release notes. In there, there is very good step-by-step on how to prepare both PC and Mac to do it, including using a downloaded VMWare Fusion PC Migration Agent. But this apparently does not apply to anything now. I installed the Migration agent on the PC, and whereas the documentation says that upon restart, the PC will offer a 4-git PIN that the Mac's Fusion will ask for. Instead, the PC offers an IP address. OK, maybe. But then the documentation does on to say that once Fusions is launched on the Mac, I should go to some menu, maybe the Virtual Machine Library, Click the Add button, and select "Migrate Your PC..." But Fusions 13 does not have that choice in any menu. And then I find that others are using a Converter program. What's that? Is it equally frought with issues. What do I do now?

[Technogeezer]

I an trying to migrate a Windows 10 PC to an M1 Mac.

There’s the source of your problem. You can not migrate any operating system that is running on an Intel CPU (physical or virtual) to Fusion on an M-series (Apple Silicon) Mac. Period  Hard stop. You’ll need to back up the data on your old physical PC, install Windows 11 ARM under Fusion, restore your data, and install the applications you want to use.

Fusion on M-series Macs virtualizes the ARM CPU on those Macs. It doesn’t emulate an Intel CPU. Any operating system that runs under virtualization on a M-series must be running ARM code.

Because Fusion only runs ARM operating systems, the only version of Windows that runs on Fusion on M-series Macs is Windows 11 ARM.

You may be able to convert and run that Windows 10 PC using the free UTM application - that does contain an Intel CPU emulator. And Parallels just announced a tech preview of an Intel emulator for Parallels Desktop on M-series Macs. UTMs performance of emulated Intel is nothing to write home about. Parallels’ solution is reported to be slow as well. In the long run, you’ll probably be better off with the effort of building the Windows 11 ARM VM than trying to patch together a converted Intel physical PC under emulation. 

[Daniel Schroeder]

Thank you for the clarification. I learned some of this in parallel while poking around the internet. I updated the PC to Windows 11 this morning (it had a compatible AMD CPU) and all works fine now. Still interested in moving to M1 Mac if possible. All that I read suggests that Fusion will be handle Windows 11 regardless of the PC chipset. Is that true?  Still curious though. The PC migration agent running on the PC provides an IP address style of number to enter into some program on the Mac, yet all the documentation talks about a 4-digit PIN. But this is where the documentation is not clear. It says to open Fusions, but in some cases they imply using Apple's Migration Utility, and in other places something in Fusion. The documentation is clear that we need to Select File > Get Your PC. But this option never exists in my install of Fusion, and it only exists in Apple's Migration Utility. And the only option requires a 4-digit code. Not sure how to enter the IP address, if even correct. What say you?

[Technogeezer]

Still interested in moving to M1 Mac if possible. All that I read suggests that Fusion will be handle Windows 11 regardless of the PC chipset. Is that true? 

Not totally true. Windows 11 runs on both Intel and M-series Macs, but Fusion on M-series Macs needs to run Windows 11 ARM, not Windows 11 x86_64 (Intel). It's still a backup, rebuild, restore, reinstall process to get your Windows 11 x86_64 on the PC moved to Fusion. Fusion can't run Intel operating systems on M-series Macs (and Microsoft doesn't provide a way to switch Windows architectures without completely wiping the Windows installation).

As far as migrating a physical PC, Fusion removed the in-product ability to migrate from a physical PC in Fusion 13.0. That's in the Fusion 13.0 release notes.

if you're still wanting to go down the conversion route on a physical PC to target running on Fusion on an Intel Mac (not M-series), you should look at the VMware vCenter Converter (you can download it from My Downloads on the download site -- you don't need a license/subscription to do so). Documentation for vCenter Converter can be found here https://techdocs.broadcom.com/us/en/vmware-cis/vsphere/vcenter-converter/6-6.html

Note that the VMware documentation is written primarily for technically proficient users (such as those using their vSphere products). The information about using the Converter to convert a PC to the VMware desktop hypervisors (Fusion or Workstation) is in there, but you'll have to decipher how to do it based on the destination. It may be simpler for most people to back up their PC and restore it on a newly built PC. Or look on the web for a cook book on how to do it that simplifies the complexities in the VMware documentation. 

[Technogeezer]

Broadcom's documentation for Fusion also isn't the best -- it's particularly weak because there are differences in behavior between Fusion on Intel Macs and Fusion on M-series Macs that aren't well documented. The Unofficial Fusion for Apple Silicon Companion Guide found in the Library section of the Fusion Community helps fill in those gaps. You may want to download and take a look at it.

[Daniel Schroeder]

Thank you again for the clarification. I think I got it now. I'll not argue the point any longer. I appear to be up against a hard technical stop I cannot overcome easily, and this effort is only for a legacy piece of Bible study software that I can't justify spending much to migrate.

But I will add this: Page 25 of the Fusion 13 release notes specifically says twice: 

Create a new virtual machine, import a virtual machine, or

migrate a physical computer

Use the File menu to create a new virtual machine, import a

virtual machine, or migrate a PC.

VMware Fusion Pro 13

Using the Home Pane to Create a Virtual Machine or Obtain One from Another Source

You can create a virtual machine, or migrate a physical PC.

This is what was driving my questions.

Anyway, I purchased and registered an older version of Fusion (I think Fusion 11). But I lost the download when my Mac hard drive crashed, and all I have now is the 30GB file called Windows XP Home Edition.vmwarevm (and I know my old VMWare customer number). Can my purchase and this file get me anywhere towards running an older version of Fusion on my M1 Apple. Is a download of my purchased version still accessible?

[Technogeezer]

I noticed in the documentation where it implies that you can migrate an existing PC. That's a leftover from older versions of the document. Broadcom really needs to do a better job with their documentation - there's too much left to interpretation for my tastes. Thank goodness that this forum exists because there's some of us that can point you to where the documentation may not be accurate enough.

You're still up against a brick wall with Fusion versions. Even if you could download an older version with what you have (and Broadcom has made that increasingly difficult, by the way), it still won't run on M-series Macs. The earliest version of Fusion that runs on M-series Macs is Fusion 13. It's not a marketing or testing limitation - it;s a hard technical limitation due to the change in CPU chip set architecture. There's nothing you can do to get an earlier version to run on M-series Macs. (as one poster here put it, it's like trying to run a diesel engine on gasoline/petrol).

If you still have the installer for that software you are running on Windows XP, it's worth a try to build a Windows 11 ARM VM, then try to install that software and see if it'll run. If it at least fires up, you can move over the data files from your physical PC (a USB drive would work for that). If you have a virtual machine from an Intel Mac that contains the data files from the software, its virtual disk can be attached to the Windows 11 VM as a second hard drive -- allowing you to copy data files (not installed applications) from the old VM to the new one.