Another in our Resolution Paths series from Stephen Gardner, here are three Resolution Path Knowledgebase articles that will help you sort out some miscellaneous, but common issues with Fusion.

We get a lot of calls into support about failed VMware Tools installations, and even more calls about issues related to VMware Tools. There are all sorts of things we’ve seen go wrong, so we’re documenting our experience for you.

The first Respath talks about what to do when a VMware Tools installation fails. Once you get the virtual CD image attached to the virtual machine, the issue is likely one with Windows OS (so creating a new user account will bring you back to the default settings), or with Windows installer itself. VMware Tools uses Microsoft’s designed utility to package and install the files it needs, which is standard industry package Luckily, Microsoft has an extensive article that walks you through resolving the problem – and we’ve highlighted the relevant steps for you.

Here’s the Resolution Path: Troubleshooting a failed VMware Tools installation in Fusion

Unity requires VMware Tools, and is also dependent on your graphic adapters. Those two ideas form the basis for our second Respath. We rule out conflicts on the Mac, with other monitors and Spaces; then we look at VMware Tools and its associated process, then we look for conflicting software on the guest or on the host (Mac).

Here’s the Resolution Path: Troubleshooting issues with Unity in Fusion

Shared and mirrored folders also depend on VMware Tools, along with not being blocked by the OS or antivirus firewall(s). The third Respath walks you through issues with your shared/mirrored folders. Working through the setup once more, along with re-installing VMware Tools, is usually enough to do the trick. If not, checking the firewall and antivirus setup is in order. Following that, there’s a registry issue (usually seen immediately following a Fusion 2 -> 3 upgrade) that you would have seen a specific error for but is worth mentioning, and we can also check and make sure Fusion has everything up and running properly on the Mac. There are some links at the very end for specific situations (Ubuntu in older versions of Fusion, and QuickBooks).

Here’s the Resolution Path: Troubleshooting access to shared and mirrored folders in Fusion

Another in our Resolution Paths series, here are a couple more ResPaths for those of you who use VMware View. Recall that a ResPath article outlines a step by step process to troubleshooting an issue.

There are two similar scenarios that are addressed by Resolution Path Knowledgebase articles:

• Unable to Provision Desktops using Regular Clones (1029418)
• Unable to Provision Desktops using Linked Clones (1029365)

The articles have many steps in common but not all. You want to be sure to perform the checks in the order given or they might not work.

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Another in our Resolution Paths series from Stephen Gardner, here are two Resolution Path Knowledgebase articles that will help you sort out maxed out CPUs in VMware Fusion, you know, when you see 100% utilization in either the guest or the host.

We’ve already published one article on virtual machine performance, but this is an important enough topic that it deserves more space and attention.

The first path talks about why your guest might be using 100% of its assigned CPU(s) (or nearly that much). The first possibility is that a particular application of process is using that much (anti-virus apps, disk indexers, I’m looking at you), but it could be due to Fusion settings / configuration, USB devices, or something else. If this path doesn’t help you, this is an issue we’d love to know more about, so submit some feedback on the article!

Here’s the Resolution Path: Troubleshooting a Fusion virtual machine that uses 100% of the guest CPU

The second path is very similar to the first, but looks at usage of your Mac’s CPU instead. The issue may be due to Fusion configuration / setup again, or it might be an issue with a conflicting app on the Mac, or something gone wrong with the Fusion application itself. Again, if it’s none of those, this is an issue we’d love to know more about, so submit some feedback on the article!

Here’s the Resolution Path: Troubleshooting a Fusion virtual machine that uses 100% of the Mac’s CPU