You do not have to reboot the server for that, below is a process to kill a stuck VM.

How can I kill a stuck virtual machine?
ESX 3.0 method
o Login to the service console
o You can check the VM state by typing “vmware-cmd /<path to VM directory>/server.vmx getstate”
o Type “ps -ef | grep <virtualmachinename>”
o The second column is your pid of the vmkload_app of the Virtual Machine, you can also type “ps –eaf” to see all running processes
o Type “kill -9 <pid>”
o Check VM state again, it should now be off
o Type “vmware-cmd /<path to VM directory>/server.vmx start” to power on VM

ESX 3.0 Alternate method
o Login to the service console
o Get the vmid of the VM you want to kill by typing “vm-support –x”
o Kill the VM and generate core dumps and logs by typing “vm-support –X <vmid>”
o You will be prompted if you want to include a screenshot of the VM, send an NMI to the VM and send a ABORT to the VM, you must answer Yes to the ABORT question to kill the VM. The entire process will take about 5-10 minutes to run. It will create a tar archive in the directory you run it in.

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Hello,

It is still not right which is why you get the error message you are.

Issue the following command to get the list of virtual machines and their full path:
vmware-cmd -l

This will list your virtual machines and give you the full path. Then using the full path given to you in the above command try to start the virtual machine with the command mentioned in the earlier posts