Moving VMWare Fusion to a New Mac

[desertratr]

I am runinng Fusion 2 on a Macbook (Snow Leopard) with XP running inside Fusion.  Everything works, no complaints.  I need to uninstall XP/Fusion and install on a new iMac.  Can I just do the installation?  Do I need to deactivate my current copy of Fusion?

[idle-jam]

you need to uninstall is to maintain single license copy. you could do the installation on the second mac with a trial key (if you need two copies while migrating) and deactivate the 1st fusion once it is completed and changing the license on the 2nd fusion

[desertratr]

Thank you.  I only need one copy to do the mover.  Do I deactivate my current copy before installing on the new machine?  How do I deactivate my current copy?

[ColoradoMarmot]

There's no deactivation in the software itself - it's the honor system.  Just uninstall it on the old mac after you install it on the new one.

[desertratr]

On the old Mac I went to the hassle of using bootcamp to create a seperate partition, and installed Fusion there.  It was back in Aug 08 and I think I was thinking I might want to boot directly to Windows.  I was brand new to Macs (switched after a Vista debacle), and thought I might need a fair amount of Windows stuff.  I was wrong.  Can't I install Fusion on my regular OS X partition and then install XP inside that?  Or do I need the boot camp partition first?

[gbullman]

You do not need a boot camp partition to run virtual machines with Fusion.

If you only have Windows installed on your bootcamp partition, you'll either have to convert that windows installation to a virtual machine or create a new virtual machine.  If you already have virtual machines on your old machine then you just need to copy them to your new Mac.

[desertratr]

On the new Mac I only occasionally want to run XP as a virtual machine within OS X (10.6 currently).  If I understand gbullman correctly, I can install Fusion, then launch Fusion and then install XP.  Is that correct?  Sorry for being dense.

[gbullman · Accepted solution]

Yes, once you launch Fusion, select File->New... and it will walk you through the steps of building a new virtual machine.  Obviously you'll need a Windows install disk with a valid license key.

I recommend that your virtual disk be split into 2 Gig files and not be pre-allocated.  I just feel those settings give you a bit more flexibility (like if you have to copy the machine to a FAT32 drive at some point) and only take up the space you actually need.  I've always used the 2 Gig split and experimented once with pre-allocated, but did not notice any appreciable difference in performance.

Good Luck

[desertratr]

I launched Fusion then File -> New and started installation process.  I inserted XP CD and license key.  The Windows installation process stopped, reporting it couldn't locate a hard drive.  I checked settings and it had 40 GB SCSI drive identified.  I don't think that is correct.  I believe this iMac has a 500 GB SATA drive.  The Serial-ATA listing shows twom partitions: disk0s1 as 209.7 MB and disk0s2 as 499.76 GB.

I had a devil of a time killing the installation (finding the Mac equivalent for F3 took some doing).

Any thoughts?

[desertratr]

Finally got it XP installed.  I uninstalled Fusion and started over.  The trick was not accepting the default HD type of SCSI.  When I went to create the new OS, in Settings I added a HD and set type to IDE, rather than the default SCSI.  I then deleted the default SCSI drive.  I left the settings as gbullman suggested and size to 40 GB.  That allowed OS to find the HD.  Interestingly, part way through copying files I got a "fatal" error from Windows installer telling me some file didn't pass CRC.  I ignored it and continued on.  Everything seemed to install and works OK.

[ColoradoMarmot]

Actually, no, you want a SCSI drive - that's the virtual drive, not the physical one.  There's no need to change the default settings unless you need a larger drive.

[gbullman]

It is not clear to me if the migrate your PC is doing the same thing as the converter (literally making a virtual machine out of a physical machine's image) or whether the OP had to create a Virtual Machine and migrate his files, etc onto it.  If it is the former then I think the IDE is the default choice and one must jump through some hoops to install the SCSI drivers onto the virtual machine.  If the VM is created with the Fusion Wizard then it sets up the SCSI drivers as part of the building process.

I know the SCSI virtual drives are supposed to be a bit faster, but I don't notice much if any difference.  Main thing is to store the VMs on the fastest disk you can.  I have a RAID 0 eSATA connected drive that gives me really good performance.  I back up my VMs pretty much daily to offset the somewhat higher risk of RAID 0.

[desertratr]

The installer defaulted to a SCSI drive.  However the installation failed.  I had to retry and manually add in the IDE drive.  Then the installation proceeded.  Any ideas why the SCSi drive option wouldn't proceed?

[WoodyZ]

Are you walking through the New Virtual Machine Assistant and using the Easy Install feature or are you bypassing Easy Install?  If you bypass Easy Install then you need to manually provide the SCSI Driver by attaching the virtual floppy containing the driver and pressing F6 when prompted at the start of the Windows Setup process.  This is no different then if install to a Physical Machine with SCSI Drives you have to provide the driver if Windows doesn't have it.

VMware SCSI Driver Disk Driver