Cannot open the disk Reason: The parent virtual disk has been modified since the child was created

[mmarinho]

I am having the following problem and I hope someone will be able to help. I am using the latest version of vmware fusion 1.13 on a macbook pro. I have vista 32 bit and xp pro sp3. All was well until I decided to do some hard drive cleaning. I noticed that under /Users/myname/vmware I had two large vmware files and then a folder with a bunch of vmware files inside of it. So I was trying to determine what was not being used (since months ago I had converted from a windows boot camp setup to fusion). So I moved one of the vmware files to the trash called Windows Vista.vmwarevm which was 107 GB (yes gigabytes). I then launched my vista os and got an error so I moved the file back from the trash to its original location. Then I decided to delete the folder which had allot of vmware files in it (the folder was called Vista Ultimate 32 and about 67 GB in size total). I then launched vista again and also got an error. So I went ahead and moved this folder back from the trash to its original location. My vista os still does not boot up. Each time I try to launch it I get:

Cannot open the disk '/Users/my name here/VMware/Windows Vista.vmwarevm/Vista Ultimate 32-000001.vmdk' or one of the snapshot disks it depends on.

Cannot open the disk Reason: The parent virtual disk has been modified since the child was created.

All the files deleted were restored to their original locations and while this all took place I never rebooted the computer. Also if I manually browse to the Vista Ultimate 32 folder I see a file there called Vista Ultimate 32.vmx and I can run this but this vista image does not contain my current data instead its about 3 months old.

I have even tried to install the new beta version of fusion hopping that it would somehow fix this but that didn't help either. I would really appreciate some good pointers here. Thank you so much.

UPDATE:

I been looking around the forum and trying things and right now I am getting this when I try to load the vista os:

Cannot open the disk '/Users/my name here/VMware/Windows Vista.vmwarevm/Vista Ultimate 32-000002.vmdk' or one of the snapshot disks it depends on.

Reason: The parent virtual disk has been modified since the child was created.

If I use a hex editor and browse to the VMWARE folder I do see the above file when I click on the file "Windows Vista.vmwarevm" which expands like a folder and I then see a bunch of files.

-Manny

[mmarinho]

I managed to fix this one on my own. It now works fine and I can now see all my two plus months of data that I could not access before. Here is what I did. I downloaded the free Mac Hex editor called Hex Fiend (thanks Hex Fiend! Great free tool!). Using Hex Fiend I browsed to the path that contains my vmware files (your location might differ) "/Users/your name here/vmware". Under that path I have two files and one folder, here's what I got:

drwxr-xr-x 71 yournamehere blah 2414 Jul 6 11:38 Vista Ultimate 32

drwxr-xr-x@ 135 yournamehere blah 4590 Jul 6 11:38 Windows Vista.vmwarevm

drwxr-xr-x@ 22 yournamehere blah 748 Jul 6 11:38 Windows XP Professional.vmwarevm

Using the Hex editor when I click on "Windows Vista.vmwarevm" I see a bunch of files that expand under it which are not visible when I am just browsing my hard drive using the Mac OS. I then opened a file called "vmware-0.log", lots of junk in there but I managed to find there what saved my rear. Start looking from the end of the file and go up. Here is what I found in that file towards the end of the file that fixed my problem:

(0x1e).Jul 06 10:18:07.299: vmx| DISKLIB-DSCPTR: Opened : "Vista Ultimate 32-s059.vmdk" (0x1e).Jul 06 10:18:07.299: vmx| DISKLIB-LINK : Opened '/Users/yournamehere/VMware/Vista Ultimate 32/Vista Ultimate 32.vmdk' (0x1e): twoGbMaxExtentSparse, 244736258 sectors / 116.7 GB..Jul 06 10:18:07.300: vmx| DISKLIB-LINK : Attach: Content ID mismatch (fc9d48d6 != a21c8ca6)..Jul 06 10:18:07.300: vmx| DISKLIB-CHAIN : "/Users/yournamehere/VMware/Vista Ultimate 32/Vista Ultimate 32.vmdk" : failed to open (The parent virtual disk has been modified since the child was created)

The key here was "Content ID mismatch (fc9d48d6 ! = a21c8ca6)". I opened my "Vista Ultimate 32-000001.vmdk" file using the Hex editor and in there I changed the value that was listed for "parentCID" to "a21c8ca6" saved it and viola problem fixed like it never even happened! Who could ever imagine that vmware would be so kind as to give you the solution to your problem?!? Virtual machine works fine no issues.

I think this should help many of you out there with similar problems. Chances are if you are getting a similar error message its because you moved vmware files around and the above will help you fix it. I would advise you though if you have very little experience or even if you are comfortable to backup all your vmware files before you even start. Once you start making changes its very hard to keep track and you could make it worse or impossible to fix. Let me know if any of you benefit from this.

-Manny

[steve24]

this solution worked for me also.

I had created a new vm and pointed the hard disk to an existing .vmdk file. when trying to run the original vm I got the same error message, but changing the parent CID using a Hex editor to correspond with the 'mismatch' enty in the log file seems to have solved the problem.

Nice solution

[orlandold]

This works!!! thanks a lot for posting such a helpful solution!

[Technologist]

Yes ,,, great solution ,,,, it works fine with me and helped me to restore my lost data

Thank you very very much

[mmarinho]

Glad to hear that after so long my solution is still helping some of you out there. BTW, I'm still running the same setup since this fix and no issues!

-Manny

[petersenbush]

i am amazed it worked like magic. i had to change the size in 4 different .vmdk files . Thanks alot

[osha]

It worked like magic,

Thanks a LOT