VMWare fusion issue

What version of fusion are you using, and did you download the windows image from within the app?

I am running MacOS 14.5 on a M2 and Fusion Pro 13.5.2 and I can not get the guest OS to even install. I downloaded Win 11 ARM from Microsoft in Fusion and when I click the "startup" button I get nothing for 30 seconds and then finally that the OS can not be found. I have read several bugs that exist while using Fusion on MacOS 14.x and the best work around I have found so far is to revert back to MacOS 13.x, which I really don't want to do. It seems that if you turn off Voice Over everything works fine but I am totally blind so that really isn't an option. Someone posted on another thread that they came up with a work around but I am unable to find that actual thread on the Broadcom portal and they didn't post the actual fix on this site, just a link to broadcom. Any help is greatly appreciated.
Jim

While I can get the machine to boot... i'm stuck after tat. I.e, no narrator whatsoever, until your well in your way into installing windows... but for that you need sighted assistance of course so... How did you enable narrator when the machine boots? Like, I don't hear any audio whatsoever when trying to start narrator in the setup when booting the vm for the first time after the arm iso finished downloading. How do ydid you fix this? Gotta say, if microsoft messed up this badly and forgot to include narrator in their arm version you download via vm fusion... That's one heck of a bug. At least that's what i've heard that's what happened.

What were the exact steps to get the machine to boot? My install of Fusion 13.5.2 seemed to go fine. I downloaded the win 11 ISO from Microsoft inside of Fusion. I am still getting the "no OS found" error message. When I was running VM's on my Intel based Mac Narrator would start shortly after startup but I can't even get that far right now. I am running MacOS 14.5 on a M2 MBA and Fusion 13.5.2.
Thanks in advance.

after you press startup, press enter. I had to press enter a few times to insure it worked and that the, no os found didn't show up. If your succesful, you shouldn't see the no os was found message.

What I have done to resolve this is open the VM settings, select start up this preferences,then select boot from CD/DVD. Spamming enter gets you to the CD/DVD. Using VOCR, it appears there is text on the screen that says press any key to boot from CD/DVD. in my experience on an Apple Silicon based Mac, you cannot get narrator to load. I have had narrator turn on using Intel Max, but not Apple Silicon ones. You will have to use VOCR to complete the insulation process. once windows set up starts, where you select a region and keyboard layout, sound should work. hope this helps

No for narrator you just have to connect an external sound card (e.g. usb c to jack adapter), then you connect it to the guest os, plug earphones or whatever in it and you should hear narrator on setup.

Will have to try it out but, if I had say external headphones or say, a external interface and I select that as the audio device and connected headphones, would it work? Will have to test.

I'm also struggling with this. I got as far as the OP, then after hitting Resume spammed Enter which seemed to progress me beyond the no operating system error. But I'm not sure how to complete the installation.

I tried VOCR the first time and found that it was asking me for the language and timezone. But I couldn't find a button to Continue. One other time I think I managed to give the window focus somehow as it told me it couldn't follow a link because I have no internet access. (I'm guessing I managed to go to terms and conditions or something).

But now when I try Ctrl+Cmd+Shift+W in VOCR I am getting "Nothing found". I'm not sure if it is now trying to use AI to scan the screen instead of OCR. If I press it again it tells me to select a model for Ollama. This is the engine I have selected for VOCR as I don't want it to be going to the internet. I have it running. But really I don't want to be using AI at all.

But if I can get VOCR working, what am I looking for?

I heard that some people got it to work via plugging in a soundcard or some other audio device and they got narrator but... In all seriousness? This is ridiculous. Windows 11 arm not having narrator in the first instalation phaze, mind you, I downloaded the iso from microsoft's website... Is just... The implications are really bad. I.e, do this on a physical pc and... Good luck. You won't have ocr there. I'm not going to lie, this is laughable. And they say they care about accessibility? Yeah right. I mean windows 10 anyone? That one did have narrator enabled for the first instalation phaze. Seriously, how did they miss this one? I mean it’s quite obvious, to say the least. Really frustrated, and it’s been what? Over a year with windows 11 for arm if not more? You'd think they fix it by now. Anyway has anyone gotten narrator to work in the first phaze via changing soundcard etc? Or is ocr the only solution?
Not going to lie, part of me wants to make this public to news etc and cause a mess of things. A pr nightmare, in other words. This is incompetence and negligence to say the least... and to put it bluntly? A big middle finger. Or ;reaching out to someone high up in the company because this is beyond ridiculous. I have mac and I can use ocr do to me kmaking a vm but... For someone who is doing this on a physical pc... This has very, very serious implications. And for those using mac and making a vm... I'm sorry but, we shouldn't have to rely on ocr just because of this and waiste up to an hour to get things working and all do to negligence and incompetence. I mean... Microsoft took a huge and I mean... a huge step backwards here. Windows 10? fine. Windows 7 and I believe 8? Yeah, we're back to... That. This is ridiculous.
To those who have a physical arm pc... Can you confirm isthis is the case that you don't have narrator on the first install phaze of windows 11? Just curious. I'm quite sure I already know the answer; it'll be a yes it’s happening too, but just want to confirm.

OK so I cheated and got a working pair of eyes to get me through the initial steps which is a bit disappointing. Not long into the process and I heard something telling me to turn on Narrator with ctrl+win+enter. I was wearing my Air Pods at the time if that makes a difference but I don't think it does. It certainly speaks OK when I take them out. I hadn't realised that the modifiers are swapped round, so I needed to press ctrl+cmd+enter. Anyway after a lengthy and tedious (but easy) installation process I'm in.

I managed to get NVDA installed. For some reason the Narrator settings dialog didn't seem to work properly in Narrator, but stupidly it does in NVDA.

So next problem is that it seems you can't use Caps Lock as the NVDA modifier. Caps lock does work, and enabling it for NVDA changes its behaviour, but it doesn't seem to work like a modifier. It sounds like it has to be Insert. I've been reading that you then need to install something else to re-map one of the other keys as insert. I'm not sure if this is just because default Mac keyboards don't have an insert key. I am using a Logitech MX Keys. I think insert might be above delete but in voiceover help it doesn't say anything if I press it.

I really need a way to speed these voices up!!

Oh and I have a feeling my problems with VOCR are very likely to have been caused by stupidity. I don't use VOCR but almost every time I do I get stuck because I forget to turn screen curtain off. It throws me more nowadays because it gives a weird error suggesting that the AI model isn't available. Anyway, one day I will learn...

Correction. Insert can be acquired by pressing, 'FN + enter'. However, I do not think you can use this as an activator key for any screen reader.

HTH.

I verified my keyboard and I do have an insert key above delete, but it doesn't seem to work inside VMWare. So guess I am going to have to go down the remapping route. Now I wish I'd paid more attention in all those Double Tap episodes where they talked about this sort of thing.

I didn't know about FN+Enter, so that's worth bearing in mind. I haven't used the FN key in years. I remember having one of those AI conversations with ChatGPT at the time where it was absolutely certain that every single key on my keyboard was FN, apologising profusely every time I pointed out its errors.

I tested this on a intel mac to see what would happen, download the iso for windows 11, created a vertual machine started it up and... Narrator came on on intel. This is arm specific.

For me it also happens with intel for native reset of windows, but yes, you just have to have a physical, external sound card like usb/usb-c to jack adapter, make it visible to the guest os inside vmware and you're good to go. I've been doing that since 2019 ish.

So as long as I have a usbc adaptor to headphone jack it'll work? Narrator will work on arm from the first installing phaze? Any jack in particular you'd recommend? I tried it with my mtrack 2x2m interface. It was visible to the vm, I made it so that it connected automatically to the vm, set it as the default audio device but, no dice. Am I correct in guessing it has to specifically be an audio capture card or a usbc to headphone jack directly? How do you go about insuring it gets passed to the vm?

Any standard will, I personally use the one from ugreen usb-c/jack, I also tried that from Anker, anything basically that is plug and play will work, I never had issues installing windows myself whether in vm or native when doing this. Well the thing is the narrator in terminal is horrible but this isn't really under our control.

ARM Windows is not loading audio drivers at Buddha. Which seems odd, because I would think that would be one of the first things that loads, considering how fast ARM is reported to be.
Unless I am missing something here?

IS SHARPKEYS THE WAY TO GO TO REMAP CAPS LOCK/INSERT? I WAS HAVING SOME TROUBLE GETTING IT INSTALLED AT ALL TODAY BUT WILL HAVE ANOTHER GO WHEN I GET SOME MORE FREE TIME IF THIS IS THE ONE TO USE.

ALSO RE THE DRIVERS - WILL THIS ALLOW NARRATOR TO BE USED FROM THE START?

Probably. The question is... How would one load the drivers or get an iso with drivers? The iso from microsoft doesn't seem to come with drivers, hense narrator only beeing audible in the second stage of instalation unless you have an external soundcard or cable. Hopefully this gets fixed soon. I mean it'll make things easier, but glad the external sound card / cable works, will try it today.

You may be able to configure the virtual machine manager to forward USB Braille devices to a guest operating system. I haven't tried it, as I only run macOS on my Mac at the moment. However, for those who need virtualization, this would be worth an experiment. There may be conflicts with VoiceOver running on the host system, as both the host and the guest could try to claim the attached Braille display.

So got some usbc to headphone adaptors to test this out, but I'm not sure if I'm missing something. I connect the adaptor to the mac, open vmware fusion, open settings, usb, and I set the adaptor to connect automatically to windows once the vm starts. In the vm's soundcard settings, it’s connected, and the output is set to the system default, not sure if I can set it to the usbc adaptor. I can, but once the vm switches on, given the adaptor is set to connect to the vm I don't know if it will work. Anyway start the vm, note that I already had made the vm before getting the adaptor but anyway. I start it up, but still cant hear narrator. Is there something i'm missing? I'm using windows for arm, by the way, but, am I overlooking something?

I confirm this works.

I haven't virtualized anything since a month or two so can't help currently, but yes what you have done seems right. Just to make sure we're all on the same page narrator will never start by itself and you will only hear the startup sound if the sound card works, you still have to press windows ctrl enter. Maybe let the vm start, and then forward the soundcard to the guest os and let VO coming from the speakers or something? Just in case. I'd never understand why VMWare have apparently removed the equivalent we still have on windows about ctrl g and alt ctrl to get in an out of the vms.
My personal preference is to modify the macos keyboard so capslock is something else like insert which can then be controlled by the guest os, especially useful with narrator on install for example. There were some apple scripts lost somewhere on this website which do exactly that.

Set 2 Surface models up recently both on Arm and they did fine needed no sighted assistance. I am thinking this is an emulation issue.

Can you change the Mac keyboard configuration per app, or do you just sacrifice Caps Lock altogether?

Given I have an insert key on my keyboard - should that not work without me having to map anything? (It doesn't seem to be recognised at all.)

From a bit of googling, I think maybe the Mac just doesn't understand Insert, so I am thinking maybe that key isn't available for remapping. I suspect I can use the LogiOptions app to remap it, although it's not very accessible.

I'm finding that VMWare isn't 100% accessible unless I'm missing something. For example, the combo boxes such as the ones you use to select Windows edition and language don't seem to be properly usable. Also I found that it has a not entirely accessible key mapper.

With a bit of sighted help I managed to map Caps Lock to Insert here, but that didn't work. So I tried mapping section symbol as I don't even really know what that is, but it's already in use and it doesn't seem to allow you to remove the existing entry from the table.

I can't think of many other symbols I can live without. It's stupid - this keyboard has loads of buttons I don't use but also that seem to be unusable here.

I presume Parallels has a similar set of problems as this? I started with VMWare as I thought it might be the easiest given that Parallels isn't supposed to work very well with VoiceOver.

The combo boxes work, but they're a bit tricky to get it to work. When your on the combo box, press vo space, then interact with the combo box, you should be placed in the list of options

Basically for a Fusion VM you want to tell Windows to use another key in place of the caps lock, such as the key just below the Escape key ("`" on my layout) if you don't use it. The easiest method is SharpKeys. Other approaches involve remapping the host keys using something like Karabiner but I don't recommend this: it's invasive and the gains are marginal.

Or you can use UTM for virtual machines, which just so happens to have this wonderful accessibility feature that allows you to treat Caps Lock as any other key to pass through. But UTM, though great in this regard, has other shortcomings if you want to use GPU acceleration or guest support, so I only recommend that if you can't live with Fusion which, problematic as it is, is still the best option for us on Windows, I think.

Random question. Can we game with light gpu usage on fusion with windows 11 then? I didn't like utm because of the lack of this feature.

The YouTube link below shows how to game on a M-Series MacBook, running VMware fusion and Windows 11 ARM.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mqn1yoV_OW4