Troubleshooting importing a Boot Camp partition into Fusion

Products

• VMware Desktop Hypervisor

Issue/Introduction

This article provides the steps to follow when you are unable to import your Boot Camp partition into Fusion.

 

For general information about Boot Camp, see Working with VMware Fusion and Boot Camp partitions (1014515).

 

For more information about importing a Boot Camp partition into Fusion, see Importing a Boot Camp Partition in VMware Fusion (1015088).

Symptoms:

• You cannot import your Boot Camp partition into Fusion.
   
• You see one of these error messages:
  • Boot Camp partition preprocessing failed.
  • You may not be able to boot your Boot Camp partition as a virtual machine.
  • Could not create the virtual disk for your Boot Camp virtual machine.
  • Could not create the virtual machine for your Boot Camp partition.
  • A failure occurred during preprocessing: An unknown error occurred.
  • This operation is unavailable because the Boot Camp partition could not be found.

Environment

VMware Fusion 3.x
VMware Fusion 2.x
VMware Fusion 6.x
VMware Fusion 11.x
VMware Fusion 4.x
VMware Fusion 8.x
VMware Fusion 10.x
VMware Fusion 5.x
VMware Fusion 7.x

Resolution

Each step below provides instructions and a link to a document, for performing the step and taking corrective action as necessary. The steps are ordered in the most appropriate sequence to isolate the issue and to identify the proper resolution. They are also ordered in the most appropriate sequence to minimize data loss. After completing each step, try to import the Boot Camp partition into Fusion again. Work through each troubleshooting step in order, and do not skip a step.

 

To troubleshoot importing a Boot Camp partition:

1. Check that you have enough free disk space to import the partition.
   
   The import process requires an amount of free space on your Mac OS partition equal to the size of the Boot Camp partition. If your Boot Camp partition is half the size of your hard disk, you cannot import it to your Mac. You must use an external hard drive and import it to there. For details on checking free disk space, see Investigating disk space in Mac OS X (1021932).
    
2. Follow the steps in Troubleshooting using a Boot Camp partition in Fusion (1027853).