I'm honestly not sure what happened. A couple days ago I built my vmware environment, which included 3 Windows servers, an Ubuntu server, and a Kali LINUX server. All of the VMs were open horizontally within my workstation app and functional. I clicked on the Workstation Icon in my task bar and noticed that each server had its own window. I decided to close the two linux servers and after that I could no longer access these linux servers or get them to come back up where I could see their console. Somewhere along the line I also exited Workstation Pro and said not to exit the VMs. I just shut all of the vms down and now when I'm in Workstation Pro I can't access any of them. I also can't edit their settings any longer. I'm not sure what I've done to break this. Here's a couple of screen shots. I honestly have no idea what I've done to cause this. The only thing I haven't done is restart the machine, which of course, I will do now. 🙂 I just restarted my computer and that hasn't made a difference. Based on what I'm seeing, none of the VMs I created a few days ago and some I even used today, seem to be available to me to use. I am new to this version of VMWare Workstation, but not new to VMWare. I've not seen this before. Please advise.
Have the VM's folders been renamed?
You may check the registered VM's in the "inventory.vmls" at "%APPDATA%\VMware".
To rule out file/folde permission issues, start VMware Workstation with "Run as Administrator" to see whether this works.
André
Are there things I'm missing from this post that would make people want to respond to it? Log files?
Try this step:
1. Close Workstation UI.
2. Navigate to your VM's directory, if there have sub-directory named as "VMNAME-vmrest.lck" and "VMNAME-vmx.lck", delete them and restart Workstation.
Try to open your VM again.
Thank you for the response, haiweiz, however, there were no directories named anything like this in my vmware directories. I do have all my vms sitting at c:\vmware rather than the default directories. But I checked c:\programfiles86\vmware\ directories and there were no files like this there either. I am attaching a directory listing. I do have a bunch of stuff in cache directories. Don't know if that's related or not.
Have the VM's folders been renamed?
You may check the registered VM's in the "inventory.vmls" at "%APPDATA%\VMware".
To rule out file/folde permission issues, start VMware Workstation with "Run as Administrator" to see whether this works.
André
I think the one thing I like most about forums is I learn new things all the time from troubleshooting suggestions.
I actually tried running as an administrator yesterday and it didn't make a difference. However, just now when I tried, it worked. It looks like I can now access my servers again. There are no little red-x-circles on my vms any longer. In fact, I just exited and ran without administrator rights and my VMs are available as well. It fixed itself just as it appeared. No clue what I did differently. I did pull up the file you suggested and I looked at it, but other than that, I did nothing else.
I honestly hate resolving issues like this because I have no clue what fixed it. Oh well, hopefully it is resolved for now.
I did exit workstation and go back in without Administrator Privileges. I was able to start all of my windows servers, but my LINUX servers gave me a local permissions error (c:\vmware\vmname). When I logged back in as Administrator, I was able to then load my LINUX servers as well. NOt sure what the difference is there. For that reason, I'll mark your response as the solution
I honestly hate resolving issues like this because I have no clue what fixed it.
I can absolutely understand that!
What I assume is that it is an issue caused by NTFS permissions, i.e. file/folder permissions combination with file/folder owner settings.
What should resolve the issue is to grant the local "Users" group read/write permissions to the "C:\vmware" folder (and all of the sub-directories).
André