I ended up going to back bare metal (so to speak) and reinstalling Catalina (you have to do the Option, Command, Shift, R reboot otherwise it puts back Big Sur) as Time Machine was going to take 96 hours to restore.
The process was painful, even with a full Time Machine backup available. I have not been able to get past this issue and ended up reverting to Catalina and WMWare 11 (I cannot get VMWare 12 to work on Catalina with a large number of 'broken pipes' messages that I cannot repair). So I am assuming I am not doing something and would seek guidance. I have done it for every version of VMWare from version 1 and had relatively few issues with the upgrades, but this is the first time I have had the converted VM refuse to run.
What am I doing incorrectly? My normal process is install the VMWare upgrade, run the VMs using the new install of the latest update to VMWare, respond to the question whether you want to upgrade the VM and then let it do its thing, which usually means it converts the VM, runs the client and then prompts for the install of the latest version of VMware Tools. I tried leaving security settings unlocked (I had issues with OWCs Softraid which would not install unless you unlocked the security settings prior to install, rather than it prompt you to unblock to install the extensions it needs when installing) but it made no difference, so I am looking for some guidance here. I wish I had noted down the issue exactly, but having to make a copy of the VM and then install 12 and try to run it, is a pain (after spending hours wrestling with Big Sur) so just noted that I was getting a series of 'broken' pipes messages and the VMs (I have 4 I use regularly) failed to start. I cannot get any VM to work on 12 in Catalina. I have read of a number of people who have made a comment about broken pipes warning when trying to get 12 to work on Catalina.
Whatever the reason, it is unreliable and unusable at present.ĭo think my issues with VMWare 12 on Catalina is due to Pro versus standard version? There seems to be a lot of reported issues with VMWare 12 at this time and are probably caused by VMWare switching to the Apple APIs (DEXTs) instead of using Kernel Extensions (KEXTs) however I have real evidence of this and it is supposition on my part. I won't be purchasing VMWare 12 at this time. I was trying it out with the free license version prior to purchasing a full commercial license. I am not sure what is causing this, but it makes VMWare 12 useless on Catalina and it does not work on Big Sur either, but for different reasons. Note that I could not get VMWare 12 to work on Catalina, since I kept getting missing pipes messages. I have reverted to Catalina and VMWare 11 and everything works as expected. I am operating the network interface in bridged mode. I also have 3 other VMs that will connect to the internet but will not talk to the MS update server, my email client in any browser (Chrome/Firefox/Edge) and the Barracuda VPN will not initialize.
All VMs are various builds of Windows 10 Pro (18 I believe). As a result this VM will not connect to the internet.
However this only occurs on 1 of the VMs. I have exactly the same problem on the released build of Big Sur (11.0.1) and VMWare 12.0.0.