I was fooled by that page as well and spent hours trying to figure out why that option was missing. As it turns out a careful search revealed that those instructions only refer to Fusion Pro, the paid version, NOT Fusion Player, the personal free version, where that option is not available. So, if you wish to pay $100 to VMWare for the Pro version, yes, you likely can do it.
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Ask and ye shall receive.
See if UEFI change for Windows 10 to 11 upgrade - VMware Technology Network VMTN helps. There are many things that you can change directly in the .vmx file of a VMware virtual machines that are not available in the UI, and this is one of them.
Thereāa another little issue here thatās alluded to in the link above. Is your VMās disk set up with GPT or MBR partitioning? UEFI wants GPT partitioning, and if you donāt have that set up, youāll need to perform some work within the Windows VM to change that.
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I actually tried editing the .vex file and adding the EFI line to it. But it did not work as it was looking for an EFI driver which I have no idea where it was of even it existed in my virtual machine. Given that I do not have a degree in computer science nor an amateur hacker of hobbies I chose the most effective and efficient way to resolve it which was to create a new EFI virtual machine, install Windows 11 and spend 16 buck on a new product key.
I donāt blame you for going down the rebuild path. Iām a computer sci guy plus a tinkerer but there are times where āit just aināt worth itā.From what I remember about Windows thereās more than just switching the firmware type. There are files that Windows puts on the āhard driveā and expects to be there on for each style of boot (EFI vs BIOS). And then there are the boot settings within the EFI firmware that Windows puts there on install. Itās a pain to deal with it if things arenāt as it wants.
Thank you for your understanding and comments. VMWare seems to take care of all that stuff when you create a new virtual machine and install the optional module needed for EFI. However their seems to be no published information on how to completely convert to EFI. manually with Fusion Player. Additionally VMWare offers absolutely no support for Fusion Player other than a a few basic tech notes and community support, much like Google. Given my frustration and without a solution, If I had the time and the perseverance I might have driven across a bridge to Palo Alto to their main headquarters and āpoundedā on some doors but thank goodness I did not have to do that. Microsoft support was a combination of useless and rude. While Apple support has degenerated at least they have not as yet quietly hung up on me as I was talking three times in a row. Now the only thing left to do is transfer my information to the new Windows 11. My data should be easy but the Apps is a another story as I have yet to find a simple inexpensive way to do it and my Windows Image backup refuses to get acknowledged when mounted with the Fusion DVD SATA device and canāt get my old style backups recognized either. Given I do not have a whole lot of Apps on Windows ultimately reinstalling them might turn out to be the best solution.
Can you create a new VM (with UEFI) and point it at the same virtual disk as your old installation (or a copy of it)? The result should be equivalent to moving a physical hard drive to a new computer.
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That sounds like a great idea to try, possibly over the weekend when I have time. Thank you.
Unless your disk is formatted with GPT partitioning, that wonāt work. EFI wonāt boot the disk if the disk is MBR partitioned. Thatās nothing to do with Fusion. You need to convert that MBR partitioned disk to GPT. Windows 10 has a mbr2gpt tool to do that, and a web search for āwindows 10 convert MBR to GPTā will point you to instructions. (Thereās a bit of a science project here since the procedure requires a local Windows account with admin privileges and a boot into Windows recovery).