The physical disk is already in use 'Module 'Disk' power on failed.Failed to start the virtual machine.'

[Bussola]

Hi everyone,

Please, help

VMWare Workstattion 12.5.9 build-7535481

VM with Windosw Server 2008 R2 cannot be started, the following error occurs:

The physical disk is already in use

Cannot open the disk 'G:\Windows Server 2008 R2 x64_work!\Windows Server 2008 R2 x64.vmdk' or one of the snapshot disks it depends on.

Module 'Disk' power on failed.

Failed to start the virtual machine.

Used Physical drive

I tried to delete .lck  files, tried the most of suggested decisions in KB of VMWare, but it does't work

Every snapshot has this issue

logs attached

[continuum]

> RW 3907029168 FLAT "\\.\PhysicalDrive0" 0
Your VM wants to use the complete disk 0. That would only be possible if your Windows system does not use this disk.
Please show a screenshot of Windows diskmanagement.

[Bussola]

[continuum · Accepted solution]

Hi Aleksandra
To be able to use a physical disk from inside a VM some conditions must be matched:
- no drive letters should be assigned - so remove driveletter G: in diskmanagement.
- the disk also should be flagged as "offline" - so right-click Disk0 and set it to "offline"
Obviously this also means that none of the VMs config-files should be on drive G:
If VMware notices that these conditions are not matched it will show an error like the one you showed me.
So make sure you match the 2 conditions above and then recreate the physical disk VMDK.

[Bussola]

Thanks

How I can use my current snapshots after re-creating physical disk VMDK.?

[Bussola]

I performed steps:

- no drive letters should be assigned - so remove driveletter G: in diskmanagement.

- the disk also should be flagged as "offline" - so right-click Disk0 and set it to "offline"

I have the same error after the attempt to launch any snapshot

[continuum]

You have snapshots for that VM ?
Then it  is a bit tricky - I would suggest that we fix this in a teamviewer-session.
Feel free to call me via skype.
If that is no option I need to know more ...
please provide a filelist of the VM's directory for a start.

[Bussola]

[continuum]

We looked into this problem and apparently the VM never actually used a physical disk but a regular one.
This vmdk is missing since about a month.
Unfortunately the VM had a snapshot tree with 8 or more branches - so recovering single files from the snapshots was no reasonable option.
Ulli

[Shert]

Good afternoon. Please clarify: how can I install Windows on a disk partition? I just tried to do this, but I get exactly the same error 😞