I have a 2017 iMac with Mojave (10.14.6) and APFS. Since the pandemic started, have been working from home using a Boot Camp partition with Windows 10 and NTFS. It was a clean install, no cloning or imaging tools used, which boots and runs reliably. I installed the trial version of VMware Fusion 11.5.6, and was planning to run that Boot Camp partition as a virtual machine directly, rather than importing a copy. (I want to have easy access to both OSes, but will sometimes boot directly into Windows for hardware-intensive tasks like CAD, design, and gaming.)
Windows had been properly shut down, but when I created the VM, I got this message:
The Boot Camp volume is not prepared to run as a virtual machine. It appears that Windows did not shut down cleanly the last time it was used.
To shut down Windows cleanly, go to System Preferences > Startup Disk and set Windows as the startup operating system. Restart your system. Once in Windows, use the Startup Disk pane in the Control Panel to select Mac OS X as the startup system, then click the Restart button to return to OS X.
The first few times, it made a broken VM that can't find its boot disk. The last few times, it doesn't create a VM at all.
Here are the steps I have tried so far:
- No change -- the procedure suggested in the error message
- No change -- steps from https://communities.vmware.com/thread/152344 :
- open the Mac terminal
- rm -dfr "~/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/Virtual Machines"
- reboot into Mac and try making the VM again
- No change -- steps from https://communities.vmware.com/thread/635124 :
- boot into Windows, and run the command
- shutdown /s /f /t 0
- reboot into Mac and try making the VM again
- No change -- completely remove VMware, reboot, reinstall VMware, and try again
- No change -- steps from https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2151780
- reboot into Recovery mode
- disable System Integrity Protection
- reboot into Mac and try making the VM again
Also consulted:
I have attached the problem report and ~/Library/Logs/VMware Fusion/vmware-vmfusion.log
Output from Mac terminal for "diskutil list" :
/dev/disk0 (internal):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme 121.3 GB disk0
1: EFI EFI 314.6 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_APFS Container disk2 121.0 GB disk0s2
/dev/disk1 (internal, physical):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *2.0 TB disk1
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk1s1
2: Apple_APFS Container disk2 1.8 TB disk1s2
3: Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP 245.2 GB disk1s3
/dev/disk2 (synthesized):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: APFS Container Scheme - +1.9 TB disk2
Physical Stores disk0s2, disk1s2
1: APFS Volume Macintosh HD 1.7 TB disk2s1
2: APFS Volume Preboot 43.2 MB disk2s2
3: APFS Volume Recovery 510.4 MB disk2s3
4: APFS Volume VM 2.1 GB disk2s4
