> Is there a way to access the C drive of the vm without logging in, just so I can copy those database backups?
Using a second VM sounds like a good idea - but I would not do that for several reasons:
if the "damaged" VM has a snapshot you cant add the whole chain to a second VM via the GUI - and so often only the basedisk is used. This corrupts the snapshot-chain and can easily corrupt the consistency of the latest state - for example it can easily happen that a checkdisk of the "damaged" vmdk is triggered and allowing checkdisk to run would make atters much worse.
In many scenarios using a Windows-system disk with a second VM changes the driveletters - again something that happens very quickly but is hard to fix later.
The best way to repair such damaged vmdks is to use an appropriate LiveCD - in your case any recent Win7 LiveCD would work.
Advantage: no danger to mess up driveletters , no danger to damage a complex snapshot-chain by breaking up the current VM settings.
Very useful would be a Windows 7 LiveCD which has the tools from Erdcomander or the later version called Dart if I remeber right.
Those CDs have for example tools to uninstall recently installed patches.
When you use a LiveCD you could boot the VM without modifications - when you then find out that the filesystem is damaged you would power off again - take a snapshot and boot into the LiveCD again.
Now running an extensive checkdisk against the existing vmdk can do no harm.
Either you can then fix the issue - by disabling services that fail - or you can at least access the data and copy te important pieces to a network share ...
Another safe way - use the VDDK kit and mount the vmdk remotely - readonly - this also usually does no harm
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Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...
