Creating a UEFI-Enabled VM in VMware Fusion 8.x

Update: 2018-OCT-01 – This post applies to VMware Fusion version 8.x and older. Updates were made in VMware Fusion 10 to make it easier to create a UEFI-enabled VM from the GUI.

Let’s say you want to build a new VMware Fusion virtual machine using the newer UEFI firmware instead of the traditional BIOS. How is that done in VMware Fusion? Unlike VMware Workstation and ESXi, there’s no GUI-based option to choose EFI over BIOS (at least as of this writing). So, I decided to put this post together to walk you through the process. I should also point out that this needs to be done before an operating system is installed to the VM.

If you’re not sure what the differences are between UEFI and BIOS, How-To-Geek has two great articles that explain how newer UEFI firmware differs from traditional BIOS; “What Is UEFI, and How Is It Different from BIOS?” and “What You Need to Know About Using UEFI Instead of the BIOS.”

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Building a New Virtual Machine in VMware Fusion

In this blog post, we’ll take a look at how to setup and install a brand-new virtual machine using VMware Fusion. For this post, I’ll be installing a fresh copy of Microsoft Windows to use as an example, but these same steps should apply to just about any operating system. Let’s get started!