VMWare Player refuses to load virtual machines into library.

[Pieman201110141]

I have tried creating a Windows 98 virtual hard disk, which boots fine and has Windows 98 installed on it, but the machine did not show up in the library, and will not open when I select the .vmx file In "Open a Virtual Machine". When I do that, nothing actually happens. I can't understand why it will not open the machine.

[thirdnormal]

I am experiencing a very similar issue. I'm running vmware player 3.1.3 build-324285 on Ubuntu Linux 2.6.31-22-generic-pae Ubuntu 9.10. When I try to open a guest machine the player does not show the guest it in the inventory pane of the player. However I can run vmplayer /path/to/machine.vmx and the machine will open execute properly.

When I log in as a different user on the same host machine the player works correctly. I have tried rm -rf ~/.vmware and rerunning the player but I get the same behavior.

Does anyone have a solution for this?

I've attached a screen shot of the player showing the empty inventory list.

[WoodyZ]

I've attached a screen shot of the player showing the empty inventory list.

LOL Under the circumstances I fail to see what possible technical value looking at a picture of the VMware Player Application Interface without any VM's showing could be!

When I log in as a different user on the same host machine the player works correctly.

Sounds like a permissions issue.

As a general rule when sharing a VM between Users make sure in is located in a common location that all users have full read/write permissions and it's best not to suspend the VM or take snapshots as both of these actions can cause issues with multiple users.

[thirdnormal]

WoodyZ:

Thanks for the reply. I'm glad you see the irony of the screen shot

Your point about issues when sharing a guest between users is well taken. I should point out that the reference to the other user was in the context of a troubleshooting test, I primarily use the guest only in the context of my own user account. From what I can see, my primary user account (on the host) has full rwx permissions on all the files that constitue the guest machine.

Do you know where the inventory data is kept? I would have assumed that it is in ~/.vmware but deleting that entire directory doesn't help.

Where else should I be looking?

Thanks again.