Recovering files from a crashed virtual machine (Vista)

[dhansel]

I'm sure this has been discussed, but I was unable to find it with a search.

My brother had a Vista virtual machine set up in Fusion v2.x and it crashed and corrupted his Vista. Of course he had no snapshots made.

He has files that he desperately needs to retrieve.

What should he do to be able to (at minimum) copy the documents out of the "C drive equivalent" My docs area?

Thanks,

Doug

[continuum]

does the VM still boot ? - then try to boot with a Vista recovery CD.

if not - post more details




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[dhansel]

VMDK mounter to the rescue!

I kept on searching and found the answer to my question. My brother is eternally grateful.

[ejlml]

Hi, dhansel.

I'm on the same boat, how do you rescue? Are you right click the VM file and select Open With VMDKMounter? What's happen after? My drive is nothing inside but I can see it's used 23.94GB on the disk. Could you pls share you experience to recovery my files, thanks!

p.s I'm XP on the machine.

[dhansel]

OK, here's an interesting note:

After my brother selected "open with VMDK mounter.app" a disk icon appeared on his desktop as expected, but then as you describe, he went to his folders and found them empty! So, after crying about it for a few minutes, he had the forsight/foreskin to actually copy the "empty" folder out. To his surprised, the copy showed several gigs of data being copied and when he went to the new folder, his files were all there!

I hope this works for you!

[ejlml]

Thanks for your reply. Could you pls tell me more detail how to copy the empty folder out? I think we're really same case, my folder is empty but used 23.94GB. I've try to use my other desktop that are real XP, to copy the vmdk drive to the desktop via home network. But no luck, it's still empty after copied on the real XP desktop.

[dhansel]

My brother simply copied these (empty) folders to an external drive that was mounted on the Mac desktop.

[ejlml]

No luck, nothing can copy.