Recovering a Quicken file/data from a VMWare

[TheOrganizedOne]

Hi all, 

I'm new here and not sure if this is the place to post this. If not, can someone tell me where to post?

I am a small business owner and I had a Macbook that I was using VMware Fusion 10.1.6 (for Intel-based Macs) for my Quicken for the PC app. The drive crashed and both an Apple and a nonapple tech could not get the machine to boot back up to recover my 20 years of Quicken data. The computer has been recycled.

My goal is to recover my Quicken for the PC data/file and upload it to my new PC to continue my bookkeeping. I won't need VMware going forward.

I had that Macbook backed up using software called Carbonite, however, we are not sure if BOTH sides of the partitioned drive were actually configured correctly for a full backup. Carbonite helped me download some files from the backups they did have, but we are still unsure if these files contain what we need because we can't open them. The file names that look suspiciously hopeful are called Virtual Disk-s001.vmdk and Virtual Disk-s002.vmdk both having approximately 4,151,424 KB. There was 1 other folder with extensions of .lck and 1 other file with the extension of .vmem that could possibly be the files we are looking for as well.

Since that Mac computer died, I purchased a new HP to be able to continue using my Quicken for the PC app with my data without having to use VMware. I also use a 2020 MacBook Pro with Intel chip and iOS Monterey, 12.2.1 that I do all the rest of my work on.

When I click on the downloaded files from Carbonite with the .vmdk extensions on my new PC, it asks me what app do I want to use to open the file. I tried downloading the version I already owned from the VMware website: VMware Fusion 10.1.6 (for Intel-based Macs) onto my PC, but, yeah, that didn't work. So I downloaded it onto my new Mac.

It seemed to download okay, but when I go to click on Windows 10 on the VMware side, I get this error message on my new Mac: "This virtual machine was created by a newer version of VMware Fusion. You must upgrade VMware Fusion or downgrade the compatibility level of your virtual machine using the newer version before trying to power it on."  I don't want to buy the upgrade because I am not going to be using VMware anymore, so I then start looking for ways to downgrade the compatibility level of the virtual machine so I can just get this file. Per a Youtube video on KB2082112, I should find the virtual machine on my computer and I right-click on the Windows app to find the settings option and then downgrade the compatibility. However, on any version of the Windows app from any folder called virtual machine on my machine, when I right-click the Windows file, the only menu that comes up is "Open, Open with, Show package contents, Move to Trash, etc." No options to find the settings for the Windows app to downgrade it.

So, am I even close to succeeding here and just need info on how to downgrade, or am I going on a wild goose chase where I am never going to be able to retrieve this file? If I do recover this data on VMWare on my Mac, is it going to be more jumping through hoops to get the file over to my PC? FYI - I have been in contact with Quicken and although you can access your account on the cloud, unless you paid for THEIR backup, you can not download it.

If you were able to hang on until now and read all of this, thank you. Somebody, please help me out of this convoluted mess.

[scott28tt]

Thread reported, moderators should move it to the Fusion area.

[continuum]

>> The file names that look suspiciously hopeful are called Virtual Disk-s001.vmdk and Virtual Disk-s002.vmdk both having approximately 4,151,424 KB. There was 1 other folder with extensions of .lck and 1 other file with the extension of .vmem that could possibly be the files we are looking for as well.

2 of them only ???
Do you also find a small text-vmdk with same name just without the "-s00*" ?
Do you have readable vmware.log files ?

>> The drive crashed and both an Apple and a nonapple tech could not get the machine to boot back up to recover my 20 years of Quicken data.
In my experience  most techs declare such a case as lost just to spare themselves the detective-work.
Most techs also assume that VMware makes the best vmdk-reading tools - unfortunately that assumption  is wrong.

Did you already try Photorec ?

Ulli

[TheOrganizedOne]

Thanks Ulli for your time,

What is Photorec? Will I need to get the computer back to use it or can I use it on the recovered files with extensions .vmdk?

We only extracted those 2 files because all I needed from the machine was my Quicken file. I was using it solely for my accounting. Those two files were the most promising because they were large - most of the other files were too small to be a Quicken data file"

Do you also find a small text-vmdk with same name just without the "-s00*" ?
Do you have readable vmware.log files ?

Not that I know of (small text file or readable vmeare.log files). What would I do if I found them? I am unfortunately not a tech person, so I will need to go back to VMware to ask them to help me with it.

I'm basically looking for a way to open those 2 .vmdk files using VMware Fusion 10 (need to reload it onto my mac) without having to purchase VMware Fusion 12 just to open them, as they might not even be the files I need.

[RDPetruska]

Those files are merely *pieces* of your virtual hard disk from your virtual machine.

You can't merely open them with the VMware software (ala Fusion) - you could potentially mount the virtual disk to your host with some VMware utilities... but you would need the *entire* virtual disk.

[continuum]

I would do this next:
1. read old vmware.logs to figure out how many slices were used to build the original vmdk.
2. probably the 2 slices you got are not all - so I would create empty slices with a helper VM to complete the vmdk.
3. then I would fix the partitiontable with a helper VM
4. use photorec to search the disk for Quicken files

Ulli