Any way to still restore below VM

[thewul]

I was running some 3rd party tool. It caused that  the Windows 10-VM closed.
Then, I do not what happened, VM crashed (?) and I ended up with a BSOD (Your PC ran into a problem, blah blah IRQL...)

After rebooting, the Windows-VM was gone and I could not open it either (browse select and/or scan for VM's)

Quite a serious crash.

Attached the contents of the folder of that VM (Windows 10 x64).

Q: Is there any way to still recover it?
Probably not, hence I need to re-install Windows from scratch.

(.vmx is 0 bytes)

It has become a total mess, I am afraid. The total size of the "Virtual Machines"-folder is some 270GB, not easily something to backup ...

Thanks.

[RDPetruska]

If the only thing missing is the vmx file, that can be rebuilt from the vmware.log file.  Attach one from the folder with the 0 byte vmx file.

If there are pieces of the vmdk files missing, that is a little tougher and Ulli or Andre would be the best people to assist.

[Technogeezer]

The zero-byte vmdk file is most likely the cause of your VM not being able to be discovered. To me it looks like the VM has all the pieces that it needs, but until we get the .vmx file rebuilt we won't really know for sure.

As @RDPetruska says, post the vmware*,log files and it's highly likely that the vmx file can be rebuilt.

Regardless of whether this VM is 270GB or 10 GB, you really should have a backup strategy in place. Snapshots are not backups, and you really should not be running on snapshots for any length of time (or even worse have multiple snapshots active over a long period of time) if you value your data.

That W10-Test VM appears to be an entirely different VM. I would not go moving things from it to your Windows 10 x64 folder even though some of the contents have the same name. 

[thewul]

Thank you both! Truly appreciated to point me into the right direction.
Went over to "HowTo: Recreating a .vmx from the vmware.log file", downloaded the  log2vmx.cmd file.
Dragged the oldest available vmware.log file onto it, a new .vmx file was created.
Windows started with automatic repair, diagnosing, etc. 
After a number of screens it ended up in "Automatic Repair couldn't repair your PC"

Bad luck.

Regretfully I will have to create a new VM. See if I could find screenshots of the desktop of what I have installed and all.

Actually I have 3 Windows 10 VM's. Two contain an updated Windows 10 x64 only, i.e. no programs installed, clean installs only.
Number 1: is a local install, with username: 'UserX', number 2: is one using my Microsoft Outlook-account, but no programs installed.
These, I created them once, folder created date says 2015, but actually I hardly ever use them.

The 3rd one, with applications, crashed beyond repair.
Think I will delete the folder of the 3rd one (with the crashed VM),  and continue with the 2nd one.

Indeed, I create snapshots only, trying to leave just the last one in place. After trying/testing a program I restore the snapshot.

As for backup: frankly I would not know what exactly to backup... Never created a backup of the VM's.
(Within the 'crashed VM' folder there are 7 vmdk files (112GB), within the 2nd VM: 3 vmdk files, 70GB)
Am I supposed to backup all of them?
As said, no idea.

Thanks again!

[a_p_]

I can't promise you anything, but if you want provide the following information, so that I can take a look at it.

1. Create an new directory, and extract the files from the attached .zip archive into this folder
2. Drag the VM's folder onto the .cmd file. This will extract the .vmdk files' metadata, i.e. no user data into Metadata*.bin files
3. Run dir *.* > filelist.txt in the VM's folder to get a complete file list
4. compress/zip the Metadata*.bin files, the filelist.txt, as well as the VM's .vmx, .vmsd, and the vmware.log files
5. attach the .zip archive to your next reply

Regarding your backup question:
Unless you are working with linked clones, all of a VM's files are stored in a single directory, i.e. backing up the VM's complete directory will do.

André

[thewul]

Up front: Sorry for the delay.

Thank you very much.

I truly appreciate your attempt to help, really!

I gave it a few tries, nothing happened. A command window flashes but nothing happened, nothing was created or whatever.
I'll create a new Windows 10 VM from scratch. Let the matter rest.

As for the backup, okay, thanks. Will do that in future.