Error msg: unable to open file "Windows XP Professional-000004.vmdk"

[atsweet]

The hard drive on my iMac crashed while my virtual machine was running.  When I attempt to open the 'suspended' VM, I get the following error message:  Unable to open file "Windows XP Professional-000004.vmdk"; The system cannot find the file specified.  This file is listed in the package contents of the XP machine but it does note the date the iMac crashed which is the last working day of the VM.  I've read through discussions and tried a few things from the knowledge base, but I can't get past the error msg. to get the VM to run.  Any suggestions?

[WoodyZ]

To help figure out what is what the best way to provide comprehensive diagnostic information is to use the "Collect Support Information" command from the VMware Fusion (menu bar) > Help > Collect Support Information and then attach the .tgz file it created on your Desktop to a reply post

[atsweet]

Please find the attached file .tgz file

Note:  Since the original iMac where this VM was located is getting its hard drive replaced, I copied the VM to a different iMac from an external backup drive.  So I am trying to run the VM from a different computer than the original where it ran.

[a_p_]

From what I can see in the support files it does not look very promising. The virtual disk (snapshot) "Windows XP Professional-000004.vmdk" consists of 21 parts/files (Windows XP Professional-000004-s001.vmdk - Windows XP Professional-000004-s021.vmdk), however according to the file list, only 9 of these files are present in the VM's folder.

If there's no chance to somehow recover the missing files, I think the only option you have is to manually revert the vmx file to the last snapshot "Windows XP Professional-000003.vmdk" which means you will loose about 2 months worth of data!?

Anyway, I'd suggest we wait for WoodyZ to respond, to get at least a second opinion on this before throwing away Snapshot4.

André

[WoodyZ]

The following assumes that the current state of the Windows XP Professional Virtual Machine is still in the state as reflected by the information in the vm-05-29-11.2746.tgz file and you still have a backup copy even though the backup copy is not completely good.

Read all before proceeding to repair the Virtual Machine.

Okay, this is a bad news/good news situation...

The bad new is there are missing virtual disk segments for the "Windows XP Professional-000004.vmdk" Snapshot Disk and unless you have another Backup Source that actually contains the full Virtual Machine then you'll have to manually remove the "Windows XP Professional-000004.vmdk" Snapshot Disk.  (Will explain further on.)

The good news is the Virtual Machine can be restored to the "Windows XP Professional-000003.vmdk" Snapshot Disk although you will loose everything back to "Mar 16 12:24" in this process however without a complete working backup to restore from you really don't have any other practical option but to do this and it will need to be done manually.  (Will explain further on.)

The Virtual Machine is using a "twoGbMaxExtentSparse" type virtual hard disk or a growable virtual disk split in many files that can grow to the max size of 2 GB and while the "Windows XP Professional-000004.vmdk" file, the "Disk DescriptorFile" file, is present nonetheless the Virtual Machine is missing 11 of the binary "twoGbMaxExtentSparse" segments effectively rendering the "Windows XP Professional-000004.vmdk" Snapshot Disk useless and why a little digital surgery is necessary.  In other words in conjunction with the "Disk DescriptorFile" file "Windows XP Professional-000004.vmdk" there should be (for this Virtual Machine) 21 binary segments named "Windows XP Professional-000004-s001.vmdk" through "Windows XP Professional-000004-s021.vmdk" and only segments 1, 3, 8, 13, 14, 16, 18, 20 and 21 exist.

The other 3 Snapshot Disks "Windows XP Professional-000001.vmdk" through "Windows XP Professional-000003.vmdk" with all of their binary segments still exist so recovery back to "Mar 16 12:24" should be possible.

There are several ways to repair this Virtual Machine and to make it a bit easier on you (and me so I don't have to explain in detail how to do it) I've already manually edited the .vmx configuration file and the .vmsd snapshot database file to make this work.

The attached file "Windows_XP_Professional_Archive.zip" contains the edited "Windows XP Professional.vmx" and "Windows XP Professional.vmsd" files that you will replace the current ones with.

Then all you need to do is a little file cleanup by deleting the orphaned files associated with the "Windows XP Professional-000004.vmdk" Snapshot Disk.  The following is a list of files to delete from within the Virtual Machine Package.

-rw-------@   1 atsweetman  staff  1525678080 May 16 12:00 Windows XP Professional-000004-s001.vmdk
-rw-------@   1 atsweetman  staff  1561133056 May 16 12:00 Windows XP Professional-000004-s003.vmdk
-rw-------@   1 atsweetman  staff  1115750400 May 16 12:00 Windows XP Professional-000004-s009.vmdk
-rw-------@   1 atsweetman  staff   953417728 May 16 12:00 Windows XP Professional-000004-s013.vmdk
-rw-------@   1 atsweetman  staff  1200422912 May 16 12:00 Windows XP Professional-000004-s014.vmdk
-rw-------@   1 atsweetman  staff   419430400 May 16 12:00 Windows XP Professional-000004-s016.vmdk
-rw-------@   1 atsweetman  staff  1025966080 May 16 12:00 Windows XP Professional-000004-s018.vmdk
-rw-------@   1 atsweetman  staff   768278528 May 16 12:00 Windows XP Professional-000004-s020.vmdk
-rw-------@   1 atsweetman  staff     7274496 May 16 12:00 Windows XP Professional-000004-s021.vmdk
-rw-------@   1 atsweetman  staff        1601 May 16 11:17 Windows XP Professional-000004.vmdk
-rw-------@   1 atsweetman  staff  1610612736 Mar 16 12:35 Windows XP Professional-Snapshot4.vmem
-rw-------@   1 atsweetman  staff   143146686 Mar 16 12:35 Windows XP Professional-Snapshot4.vmsn

Have a look at: VMware Fusion (menu bar) > Help > Search > type Package then select Work with Virtual Machine Packages

After opening the Virtual Machine Package close VMware Fusion before replacing the files in the attached .zip archive and deleting the list of files above.

File Attached: "Windows_XP_Professional_Archive.zip"

[atsweet]

So after following your excellent detailed instructions & explanation (thank you so very much!), here's what happened...

As the machine started to resume out of a suspended state I was asked if I moved or copied it and I selected, Copied it.  Then I received the first error message attached as 'First Error msg after instructions.png, which reads...'Failed to lock main memory file .../Windows XP Professional..vmwarevm/Windows XP Professional.vmem. Error encountered while trying to restore the virtual machine state from file .../Windows XP Professional.vmwarevm/Windows XP Professional.vmss'   I selected OK.

After selecting OK, I then received the second attached message, 'Current message.png', which reads...'Your virtual machine did not resume because of an error.  If you believe the error is correctable and you want to preserve the suspended state so you can correct the error after the virtual machine is powered off, select Preserve.  To discard the suspended state, select Discard.'

I haven't done anything since getting this second message as I'm not sure which to choose.  I've also attached a more current .tgz file since following your instructions.

Again, thanks so much for your help (if I can simply recover my work outlook files from this VM, your help would be priceless!)

[WoodyZ · Accepted solution]

After selecting OK, I then received the second attached message, 'Current message.png', which reads...'Your virtual machine did not resume because of an error.  If you believe the error is correctable and you want to preserve the suspended state so you can correct the error after the virtual machine is powered off, select Preserve.  To discard the suspended state, select Discard.'

I haven't done anything since getting this second message as I'm not sure which to choose.

In this case I'd choose Discard.

So after following your excellent detailed instructions & explanation (thank you so very much!), here's what happened...

As the machine started to resume out of a suspended state I was asked if I moved or copied it and I selected, Copied it.

In cases such as this (restoring a Virtual Machine from Backup) the correct reply to that question is "I moved it" even thought "I copied it" seams more logical it is not the correct answer although with the advent of second error message, not cause by the reply to the first question, neither answer would have mattered.

(if I can simply recover my work outlook files from this VM, your help would be priceless!)

This Virtual Machine is still salvageable however if you're only interested in recovering User Data then after reading the following close VMware Fusion and attempt to mount the Virtual Machine's virtual hard drive using the information in the following.

Have a look at: VMware Fusion (menu bar) > Help > Search > type VMDKMounter and then select Use VMDKMounter to Mount a Virtual Disk as a Mac Volume

Note, Ignore the parts about "To add read-write support for NTFS volumes, you must install NTFS-3G separately." as it is not necessary to recovery files from within the Virtual Machine using VMDKMounter since you only need to have read access to recover the User Data.

After you get your User Data unmount the virtual hard disk from the Desktop and then if after that you'd like to recover the Virtual Machine using another methods just let us know and additional directions can be given.

[atsweet]

By mounting the VM I was able to retrieve my user data...whew!  I can't even tell you how grateful I am for your help.  Once again...thank you.

I am interested in salvaging the VM, so if you have additional instructions regarding how to recover the VM just let me know.

[WoodyZ]

There it more then one way to go forward from here however one way and what I'd consider the easiest would be to create a new virtual hard disk from the existing virtual hard disk (including its snapshots) using vmware-vdiskmanager and then with the exception of the .vmx configuration file delete everything else within the existing Virtual Machine Package and then move the newly created virtual hard disk inside the Package and then change 'scsi0:0.fileName = "Windows XP Professional-000003.vmdk"' to 'scsi0:0.fileName = "Windows XP Professional.vmdk"' in the .vmx configuration file.

This way you will have a Virtual Machine configured as you presently do starting with a new base disk without any snapshots starting at the point in time of the last snapshot disk.

The syntax for the vmware-vdiskmanager command for this operation is:

vmware-vdiskmanager -r sourceDisk.vmdk -t 1 destinationDisk.vmdk

More specifically here is what you'd do.

Create a new folder in the  "~/Documents/Virtual Machines" folder named "newdisk.tmp" and use the following command in a Terminal.

"/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/vmware-vdiskmanager" -r "/Users/atsweetman/Documents/Virtual Machines/Windows XP Professional.vmwarevm/Windows XP Professional-000003.vmdk" -t 1 "/Users/atsweetman/Documents/Virtual Machines/newdisk.tmp/Windows XP Professional.vmdk"

The command above is a single command so make sure you copy and paste it in its entirety into the Terminal. (/Applications/Utilities/)

Here it is on one line.

"/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/vmware-vdiskmanager" -r "/Users/atsweetman/Documents/Virtual Machines/Windows XP Professional.vmwarevm/Windows XP Professional-000003.vmdk" -t 1 "/Users/atsweetman/Documents/Virtual Machines/newdisk.tmp/Windows XP Professional.vmdk"

Any questions?

[atsweet]

Interesting enough, I was going to followup on your instructions this afternoon, but first tried to open the vm machine (since following your previous instructions and then mounting it last week) and voila, the VM started up today.  Not sure why, but I am ever so grateful for your help.  Thank you!!