Since VMware Fusion 13.6, there is an issue where each time you start an existing powered-off or suspended virtual machine, you are prompted whether the virtual machine was copied or moved, even though it isn't.

This is due to an issue with the virtual machine library files (files that tell which virtual machines are in the library). Each virtual machine has a unique identifier (called UUID). This UUID is stored in the virtual machine library and must be unique. VMware Fusion allows the use of both personal and shared virtual machines (shared with other users) and to this end, two inventory files are kept:

• A personal file, located in ~/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/vmInventory
• A "shared" file, located in /Library/Application Support/VMware/VMware Fusion/Shared/vmInventory

It looks like VMware Fusion updates the UUIDs in the personal file, but when starting VMware Fusion (e.g. after a reboot), the check for unique UUIDs is being performed against the "shared" file, resulting in the prompt appearing for each virtual machine.

A solution/workaround to this issue is to remove the two-files issue by deleting the shared version, then creating a symlink from the personal file to the shared, effectively having only just one version of the file (which is on two locations because of the symlink).

You can do this via the following commands via Terminal. The second command can be replaced with rm vmInventory if you do not want to save the original file:

cd /Library/Application Support/VMware/VMware Fusion/Shared
mv vmInventory vmInventory.save
ln -s ~/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/vmInventory .

The only downside to this is that the virtual machine will appear as a shared virtual machine in your library as well but it should prevent the prompt when starting the virtual machine.