VM Instance seems to be lost

[TouringMN]

I was having a multitude of problems with my VM in the past two weeks. Software installs were failing because they failed to write to the 'local' storage on my VM, XP Pro. I have 4 GB free space that was recently defragmented. So there are no issues with space. don't tell me that defrag is a bad idea, please. :smileyshocked:

I had attempted to do a Windows update and that failed to connect to the Update site. I attempted a couple other updates that also failed recently. This is a very recent event though because I had successfully installed other applications in the past month.

Now, I can not see any of the previous desktop icons, I can not find the recent applications or files that I know had existed. It is as though I have lost about 5-6 months of history.

Any ideas, any suggestions, all help would be greatly appreciated.

Al

[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.

In addition to the .tgz file a file listing of the target Virtual Machine Packages is also needed and the directions below will help get it in the format needed.

1. In a Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal), type the following without the quotes, including the trailing space, however do not press Enter yet and note that the following contains lowercase L's, not ones: "ls -lAF "

2. In Fusion's Virtual Machine Library (VMware Fusion (menu bar) > Window > Virtual Machine Library), ctrl-click the target Virtual Machine and then select "Show in Finder".

3. Drag and drop the target Virtual Machine onto the Terminal and this will populate the fully qualified pathname of the Virtual Machine.

4. Next type the following without quotes, including leading space, then press Enter: " > ~/Desktop/filelist.txt"

Example of the full command line in Terminal:

ls -lAF /Users/${USER}/Documents/Virtual Machines.localized/Windows XP.vmwarevm  > ~/Desktop/filelist.txt

5. Next attach the filelist.txt file and the .tgz file that were created on the Desktop to a reply post.

[TouringMN]

Thanks for this reply. Here are the documents that you requested.

Hopefully, this means something this means something to you.

Solutions will be greatly appreciated. We have lost our upgrades to Quicken - from 2007 to 2010, very significant tracking spreadsheets.

I am very open to everyone's assistance.

Thanks,

Al

[WoodyZ]

Okay I've taken a quick view of the information however I'm headed out for the evening so for now what you need to do is shutdown, not suspend, from within Windows and then close Fusion and the make a backup copy of the Virtual Machine Package.

Once you shutdown, not suspend, from within Windows and then close Fusion you can go into ~/Documents/Virtual Machines/ and select the Virtual Machine Package and ctrl-click and select Duplicate.

I'll follow up later with details on what I've found and what you'll need to try however make the backup and then answer this question...

Did you by any chance revert to a previous Snapshot without saving the current?

The reason I'm asking is from the quick look I took that is what it could be showing and of course if that is it then that's not going to be good if you don't have proper current user data backups outside of the Virtual Machine or a current backup of the Virtual Machine Package before your issue but make the backup first before doing anything else just if only because it's the right thing to do before making the situation worse then it may already be.

[TouringMN]

I have made the duplicate following the VM shutdown and closing Fusion.

I did revert to a previous snapshot, yes. I do NOT know that I Saved a current snapshot as I am Certain that I was not

prompted to do so. So you are confirming my worst fears.

The good news is that I do have a rather current back-up of my Quicken data. But hmmm, Turbotax might be missing as well

as a couple other items that i use for tracking items.

I look forward to whatever insight you might have to provide.

[WoodyZ]

Okay the first thing I looked at was the filelist.txt file and I saw 3 .vmdk files. Based on the filename, date, time and size of the 3 .vmdk files among this one of the things it shows that the virtual hard drive is using a Monolithic Sparse Disk.

-rw-------@   1 TouringMN  staff  11586895872 Feb 17  2008 Windows XP Home Edition.vmdk
-rw-r--r--@   1 TouringMN  staff   2642149376 Feb 27 14:20 Windows XP Home Edition-000001.vmdk
-rw-------@   1 TouringMN  staff    367263744 Feb 27 16:12 Windows XP Home Edition-000003.vmdk

The next thing I looked at is the Virtual Machine's .vmx configuration file to see which .vmdk was the current virtual hard drive.

scsi0:0.fileName = "Windows XP Home Edition-000003.vmdk"

Now with this information I see that "Windows XP Home Edition-000002.vmdk" is missing and this could be the Snapshot Disk that contains the missing information.

Next I looked in the vmware-vmfusion.log file for "Windows XP Home Edition-000002.vmdk" I see the following relevant information as to what took place.

Feb 27 14:20:32.393: vmfusion| SNAPSHOT: Snapshot_Revert: ...
...

Feb 27 14:20:32.448: vmfusion| DISKLIB-LIB   : CREATE CHILD: "/Users/TouringMN/Documents/Virtual Machines.localized/Windows XP Home Edition.vmwarevm/Windows XP Home Edition-000003.vmdk" -- monolithicSparse grainSize=128
Feb 27 14:20:32.456: vmfusion| DISKLIB-DSCPTR: "/Users/TouringMN/Documents/Virtual Machines.localized/Windows XP Home Edition.vmwarevm/Windows XP Home Edition-000003.vmdk" : creation successful.
Feb 27 14:20:32.551: vmfusion| SNAPSHOT: SnapshotDeleteDisks '/Users/TouringMN/Documents/Virtual Machines.localized/Windows XP Home Edition.vmwarevm/Windows XP Home Edition-000002.vmdk'.

What the last line above tells me is that you selected "Restore Snapshot" and selected "Don't Save" and thus anything that was in that .vmdk is gone and no longer available to the Virtual Machine.

Now I didn't spend to much time analyzing the information since it seemed to confirm my original assumption and the only suggestion I have is you could try directly mounting "Windows XP Home Edition-000001.vmdk" with VMDKMounter to see if it contains the missing information however if you do this do it either with the copy of the Virtual Machine Package you made or make another copy. The purpose of using the copy or making another copy is once you directly mount that disk it can cause problems if you try to run the Virtual Machine so you're just doing this as a test for finding your user data and will dispose of that copy of the Virtual Machine after asserting whether or not it contains the information. You can also use the Delete Snapshot command and delete all Snapshots thus writing and changes from the Snapshot Disks back to the Base Disk and then see what you have however whatever course you decide to take always maintain a untouched backup copy of the Virtual Machine until you have things resolved and in any event is always good to have a known good working copy as a backup at all times.