I run Windows 8.1 within VMWare Fusion in full screen mode and sometimes get stuck where a program freezes or becomes unresponsive. On a regular PC I’d just push the power button. How do I do the equivalent within VMWare Fusion?
Ah yes, the so-called three-finger salute of Ctrl-Alt-Del on a Windows PC. One of those essential secret bits of information to help you retain your sanity when everything else on your Windows system goes south, though it’s definitely not the recommended manner of restarting if your system is still responsive (instead use “Restart” from the Power menu or its equivalent, depending what version of Windows you’re running).
Drop this all into the world of VMWare Fusion — or Parallels — on your Mac and it’s a bit more nuanced because it’s not always obvious how to get to some of those capabilities, and while you can ostensibly restart your entire Mac, the entire point of virtualization is that you shouldn’t need to do so. Fortunately, unless VMWare Fusion freezes up (something I’ve never experienced) you should be able to get to its controls…
I got stuck in Tiny Death Star and needed to do a force restart within VMWare Fusion myself, and to make it more complicated, I was running in full screen mode so I couldn’t see any of the Mac controls. Here’s what I was seeing:
Where are those pesky controls?
Turns out they’re just hidden. Move your cursor up to the very top of the screen and wait a second or two and all sorts of things appear:
What you seek is off the Virtual Machine menu, as becomes obvious when you see what it offers:
Choose “Restart” from the menu.
It’ll confirm that’s what you want to do:
Good? Click “Restart” and it’ll reboot the entire virtual machine — and, of course, the Windows 8.1 operating system running within VMWare Fusion — and get you back to the start screen.
If you can get to the Virtual Machine Library window, btw, you can also pause or restart from this view too. Notice in the below the pause button, for example:
Hope that helps out, and I hope you don’t get trapped in Tiny Death Star or any other game for which The Force is apparently the requisite for escape!
Had a similar problem this morning. Running a Windows app in Parallels, when the mouse quit functioning. Could move it around, but clicking on anything did nothing. Couldn’t bring up Task Manager on the Windows side, and couldn’t click the Apple to Force Quit. And couldn’t access my crib sheet file on the keyboard shortcuts!
Turns out my cell phone was sitting on my Touch Pad, which thought I was doing a touch-and-hold.
Removed the phone and everything was good.