Error "No PCIe slot available for Ethernet3. Remove Ethernet3 and try again"

[Workstation10]

I've been using Workstation Pro v11 for some time on a Win7 system.  Recently our IT dept upgraded this machine to Win10, and v11 continued to work fine for the existing VM.  I now have to extract a VM of that Win10 machine, and IT upgraded me to WSPro v14 but Converter Standalone v4.x couldn't extract the second drive.  IT then upgraded me to WSPro v15.0.4 and Converter v5, and I was able to extract the VM to an external USB3 drive.  However, when I try to start that VM (residing on that external drive), I get the above error.

Converter v5 wouldn't let me specify higher than Workstation 9.0 virtual hardware, and built the VM for a Win8.1 host rather than Win10, so I used WSPro to update the virtual hardware to 15.0 and changed the host OS to Win10, but continue to get this error.  I've looked in the VMX and see that all the PCI bridges are enabled.  I'm attaching the VMX.

Any help greatly appreciated!  IT has recently stripped everyone in our company of admin level logins for network security reasons, but I must have admin rights for my work, so the goal is to set up this VM with admin rights but no access to the corporate network so that I can do my work.

Thanks,

Steve Sneed

B&W

[continuum]

Your vmx-file apparently was edited manually.

Looks like someone manually changed ethernet3 , 4 , 5 and 6 from an adapter type that use a pci-port to an adaptertype that uses an pci-express port.
This has the results that the pci-slot numbers become invalid.
To fix this you should reset your PCI-ports.
To do that power off the VM and remove all snapshots ( just in case you use any ) and then remove all vmx-entries that specify pci-ports.
That means delete all lines starting with:

ethernet*.pciSlotNumber

and delete all lines starting with

pciBridge*.pciSlotNumber
Next start of the VM will reset the port numbers.
In case you do not know ....
normal PCI-ports use numbers starting at 17, 18,19 ....

PCI-express ports start at 160 (reserved for SCSI) , 192, 224, 256 and so on.
I highly recommend to backup your vmx-file before you try this.
Note: port 16 and 160 are reserved for the first SCSI-controller. Do not use this PCI-ports for anything else !

[jchando]

Hi.  Thanks for your reply.  I had seen the post that you offered as a fix for the issue.  There was no entry beginning with "ethernet" in the VMX file I am using and removing 2 "pciBridge*.pciSlotNumber"  entires did not accomplish anything when I attempted to add a NIC.  The errors persisted and "pciBridge*.pciSlotNumber"  entries  that I deleted were recreated in the  VMX file upon restarting the VM.