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VMware Fusion complains "cannot connect to the virtual machine"?

I just upgraded VMware Fusion from 2.0 to 2.0.2 and now when I try to run my Microsoft Windows XP virtual machine, it doesn't run, it first tells me that I have an old virtual machine and need to upgrade it, then tells me that VMware Fusion cannot connect to the virtual machine. What's wrong and how do I fix it?

Dave's Answer:

I'm a big fan of VMware's Fusion product, which lets you run any Intel-friendly operating system within its sandbox on your Macintosh system. From Windows XP to Linux and more, there are quite a few different systems you can run on your Apple hardware with VMware Fusion.

The problem? Sometimes these upgrades hiccup and things glitch.

The error you've seen is the same error I saw when I recently upgraded VMware Fusion, so I know what you're talking about, and know how to fix it too.

You were seeing this:

vmware fusion cannot connect virtual machine

The solution? Believe it or not, you need to uninstall and reinstall VMware Fusion.

Start by clicking on the "uninstall" icon on the virtual drive:

It warns you about what you're about to do:

Notice that the virtual machines are untouched. That's good.

Continue and you'll be asked to enter your admin password:

Do that correctly and it'll start uninstalling:

Shortly thereafter (it really doesn't take long) you'll find that you've uninstalled VMware Fusion:

Now go back to the virtual disk and click on "Install" again. Agree to the license terms and default configuration and you'll be installing yet another version of VMware Fusion in no time:

Once it's installed, if you try starting up the virtual machine again you'll still see that warning about the virtual machine being out of date, but this time when you click past the window you'll see:

A few seconds later, voila! You're running your virtual machine, just as you desire.

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Categorized: Mac OS X Help (Article 8789)
Tagged: microsoft windows xp, parallels desktop, vmware fusion
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Comments

I appreciate your blog, and for this I'm buying you a cuppa. So far, I've just listened in the background, but I feel compelled to comment on this post. I'm surprised to read you are such a big fan of VMWare Fusion. I've been a software developer for many years, and I keep my husband's attorney practice running on a small network of Macs. A few pieces of software for attorneys run only on PCs. So, a year ago, I purchased a couple copies of VMWare Fusion. It caused us nothing but headaches. On one machine, the virtual machine repeatedly became corrupt. I can't tell you the number of times I reinstalled before I gave up. The clincher for us was that not all of the windows software we needed to run would run under Fusion. When I called for support from the software company they said, "You must be running under fusion, it offers us no end of headaches." After much frustration I switched to Parallels and we've never looked back. All the software I have ever tried runs, and we've never had a problem with corrupt virtual machines or problems with upgrades. Everything I read also indicates that the performance of Parallels is superior to Fusion. So I'm curious, what makes you a big Fusion fan. Am I missing something?

Posted by: Winnie Williams at March 11, 2009 2:01 PM

Thanks for your note, Winnie. I've had good experiences with both VMware Fusion and Parallels Desktop, so I guess I'm rather agnostic. I know of others that swear each is far better than the other, too. In fact, I have two laptops, and run Parallels on one and VMware Fusion on the other...

Posted by: Dave Taylor at March 11, 2009 3:38 PM

Thanks for this information but it did not work for me.

I still get:

VMware Fusion cannot connect to the virtual machine.
Make sure you have rights to run the program and to access all directories it uses and rights to access all directories for temporary files.

This is for v2.0.6

Posted by: ricbax at October 19, 2009 6:40 PM

Hi dave, thanks for your note it looks easy :), i have the same problem but i'm using vmware Workstation 6.5.3 i did try it but didn't works with vm-workstation :(. may you have an idea what can i do? to solve this.
sorry for may bad english greetings from mexico :)

Posted by: jimmy at October 23, 2009 11:11 AM

I have a lot to say, but ...

I have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but most of all I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a chai!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!