VMWare Fusion PC Migration: A secure connection to the server could not be established

October 4th at 12:00am

I was given a MacBook to replace my Desktop PC at work. Seeing as I do most of my work in Windows and Visual Studio, I used the Migration Assistant that comes with VMWare Fusion 5 to bring my Windows 7 desktop over to the MacBook as a VM.

Unfortunately this didn't go as well as planned. In the end I was able to get the migration process working, but it took some time.

References:

 

What's going on?

I've used Macs for 15 years now. After about OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard for the felinely inclined) I found the OS to be too much like iOS and switched over to a combination of Windows and Linux VMs. At work I was given a MacBook and I wanted to keep the state from my Desktop Windows PC so I fired up VMWare fusion's PC migrator.

It seemed to be a pretty straight forward process: Disable firewalls, Install the migrator agent on the PC, follow the wizard on the Mac side and in a few hours I should have things copied over. When it didn't go down that way I was kind of annoyed. All I saw was a message indicating that a secure connection to the server could not be established. No log files, no other details, no helpful that could help me figure out what to do next.

 

How I solved the problem

After googling for awhile I found an old page discussing Fusion 4.0's migration assitant which helped me fill in the gaps. After reading that document I came up with the following set of steps that worked for me to get my PC to migrate to a VM on the Mac:

PC Side:

  • Uninstall all VMWare products from the PC
  • Disable simple file sharing on the PC
  • Disable UAC on the PC
  • Disable the firewall unless you want to track down what ports you need to open up
  • Install the VMWare Fusion PC Migration Agent on the PC
  • Restart the computer
  • Login as an Administrator account
  • Start the PC Migration Agent if it doesn't automatically start

Mac Side:

  • Disable the firewall or allow SMB (Windows File sharing) exclusions to your firewall
  • Enable Windows File Sharing for the user you are currently logged in as
  • Open VMWare Fusion
  • On the Virtual Machine Library screen click the Add button and select Migrate your PC...
  • Follow the wizard screens and provide all requested information (Username and password of the PC, Activation code or IP address and port, Name of the new VM)
  • You may be prompted with a message box indicating that your PC isn't trusted and asking you if you want to continue. Select the option that allows you to continue.

 

I'm thinking that the 'secure server' error had something to do with SMB configuration. I'm just glad that the thing is migrating and should be done in a couple of hours.

Addendum:

Looks like that copy failed at 98%. I installed the VMWare Stand Alone Converter and converted the PC to a VMWare Workstation image.

After getting the VMDK over to the Mac and attaching it to a VM I had to get the Windows 7 x64 ISO and 'repair' the installation since it was blue screening.