Unable to Install VMware Fusion Player 13 on MacStudio Apple M2 Ultra, Sequoia 15.2

Nope, I have a solution for that (after running into that same error many times).

When you get to that message:

Press Shift+f10

An MS-DOS command line window will appear. Enter the following command:

OOBE\BYPASSNRO

The VM will reset and it won't ask for your network connection. Then you can install vmtools for the vmxnet driver later during the install, which will then give you a network connection.

That's because the Win 11 virtual image it started to create is still on the drive. It sees that one and tries to continue.

There are a couple of ways to get rid of it. The proper way is to remove it from the list of VMs you've created. When you first launch VMware, the borked install should appear and wait for you to run it. Instead, close the Win 11 panel.

There should then be palette behind that VM window with the Win 11 image listed on the left, and a small image of it on the right. Right click on the name in the left column and choose to delete it. That will remove both the entry and the actual image.

Otherwise, click anywhere on the desktop so Finder is showing as the foreground app at the upper left. Press Command+Shift+H to open your user account home folder. You should see a folder their named Virtual Machines. Open that folder and delete the Win 11 image. That will technically, incorrectly leave an orphaned entry in the VMware list, but at least it will be gone.

Hmm, I wonder why you needed to go through so many extra steps? All I needed to do was press Shift+F10 (no fn key necessary, or available) to let the installer blow past the network part. Once Win 11 finished installing and I was at the desktop, I could then choose to install the VMware Tools package and get network access working.

Heck, I even pulled a copy of the VMware Tools .iso out of the application package and assigned it as a second virtual CD drive before starting a Windows 11 install. And it still wouldn't go on its own.

But, at least you got it to work.

Seems to be a catch in the ARM versions. I can install Windows over and over on a 2018 Intel based Mac and it works every single time. On an M2 or M4 Mac, sometimes the Win 10 or 11 ARM installer sees and install the network drivers by itself. But most time, it doesn't.

VMware has retired Fusion Player 13 and you should be using the free VMware Fusion Pro 13 product. This may behave better with the ARM64 Windows 11 24H2.

VMware Fusion Pro: Now Available Free for Personal Use

I happen to use Parallel's Desktop Pro with a Windows 11 Pro 24H2 guest on my 2020 Core i7 iMac. Setup and installation could not be simpler. Microsoft has stated that its Windows 11 licenses are platform agnostic for Apple Silicon and Intel.

My first thing to try then would be to simply delete that VM entry and start over.

You likely pressed Shift+f10 while macOS was the active foreground. You have to be in/on the active window where Windows 11 is being installed so Windows responds, not macOS.

Maybe something here will help:

https://partnerweb.vmware.com/GOSIG/home.html

If not, you'll probably have more luck getting help if you ask in Broadcom's Fusion or Guest Operating System forum:

https://community.broadcom.com/communities/allcommunities

Regards.

Just to first ask. Did you get the Win 11 download directly from Microsoft?

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows11arm64

I tried a free trial of that. Didn't like the way it overlaid the OS, though that's the entire point of how Parallels works, and its name. But mostly, the same resolution that was sharp for Win 11 in VMware was kind of pixelated and soft in Parallels.