Boot Camp virtual machine created by Fusion on macOS High Sierra or higher version does not have correct boot sector

Products

• VMware Desktop Hypervisor

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• Boot Camp virtual machine created by Fusion on macOS High Sierra or higher version does not have correct boot sector to start up from if the Windows Boot Camp partition is on boot disk and uses legacy BIOS
• On Mac machine with macOS High Sierra or higher version installed, if a Windows Boot Camp partition using legacy BIOS exists on the boot disk, Fusion cannot create correct boot sector when creating a Boot Camp virtual machine from the Boot Camp partition, which causes the Boot Camp virtual machine fail to boot up.
• This issue happens only on macOS High Sierra or higher version, it does not happen on macOS operating system prior to macOS High Sierra.
• This only affects the Boot Camp partition that is located on the boot disk and uses legacy BIOS, Boot Camp partition using EFI or Boot Camp partition that uses legacy BIOS and is located on non-boot disk can work correctly

Environment

VMware Fusion 10.x
VMware Fusion Pro 10.x
VMware Fusion Pro 11.x
VMware Fusion 11.x

Cause

macOS High Sierra is no longer able to read the legacy BIOS boot data from the boot disk when System Integrity Protection (SIP) is enabled, this makes the Boot Camp virtual machine created by Fusion does not have correct boot sector to start up from.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, follow below steps to disable SIP on macOS High Sierra. After following below steps, Windows Boot Camp partition that uses legacy BIOS and is located on boot disk can run as a virtual machine in Fusion properly.

1. Reboot your Mac machine into Recovery Mode by restarting the computer and holding down Command + R
2. Select Utilities -> Terminal
3. In terminal window, run csrutil disable and press Enter.
4. Restart your Mac and boot to macOS High Sierra
5. Launch Fusion, select File -> New from Fusion menu, double click Install from Boot Camp, select Create a Boot Camp virtual machine radio button, then follow the on-screen instructions to finish the Boot Camp virtual machine creation
6. Power on the newly created Boot Camp virtual machine, verify it can boot up correctly
7. Shut down Boot Camp partition
8. Reboot Mac machine into Recovery Mode by restarting the computer and holding down Command + R
9. Select Utilities > Terminal
10. In Terminal window, run 'csrutil enable' to enable SIP and press Enter
11. Restart your Mac and boot to macOS High Sierra
12. Launch Fusion, right click the Boot Camp virtual machine in Virtual Machine Library and select Show in Finder menu, a Finder window opens and shows the location of the Boot Camp virtual machine
13. Right click Boot Camp.vmwarevm in finder and select Show Package Contents menu
14. Open Boot Camp.vmdk file with TextEdit application
15. Locate the line starting with RDONLY 6 FLAT and substitute the whole line with RW 6 ZERO

Notes: 

• If a container disk is involved, substitute RD 6 ONLY FLAT entries with RW 6 ZERO
• The number 6 in the above examples is used for illustrative purposes only, the actual numerical value may vary. 

16. Save the change made to Boot Camp.vmdk file
17. Now the Boot Camp virtual machine should be able to boot up correctly even when SIP is enabled