Unable to access any VMware Images - VMWare Workstation 6.5

[joenj1]

Hello;

I have a very frustrating and potentially ugly issue. I have been running VMware Workstation 6.5.3 Build 185404 on Windows XP SP3 successfully for the last week or so.

Recently I had some cases of the WMWare guest images hanging up. Normally, I'd try to end them gracefully; if not I would close the VMWare workstation and reboot the computer.

Yesterday I went to open one of my test images, and when i clicked on it in Favorites, nothing happened. This was occuring for ALL my guest images.

I tried accessing from File>Open; same results.

This is what I have done so far:

• Uninstalled/Reinstalled VMWare workstation, previous version of 6.53 and version above. Same results

• Tried accessing guest images on another VMWare machine. Same result

• I had seen some posts about deleting/renaming .lck files if you find them in the guest OS image directory; same results.

I am currently rebuilding a new guest OS from scratch to see if that at least works.

It appears I have seriously angered the VMWare gods.

If anyone has any ideas that may help I'd really appreciate it. I'm lookinag at recreating a lot of test images.

Thanks!

[continuum]

if you try to start a VM - does it create a new vmware.log in the same directory ?

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VMX-parameters- VMware-liveCD - VM-Sickbay

[joenj1]

No, the only vmware log files are from the last time I successfully started the guest

image. I'm not seeing any new vmware.log files.

It's as if the "Start" button on VMware Workstation has been disabled... that's the best way I can explain it.

Thanks for your reply.

[continuum]

can you start the VMs with vmplayer.exe then ?

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VMX-parameters- VMware-liveCD - VM-Sickbay

[joenj1]

Thanks so much for replying!

Now that's the strange thing... VMPLAYER.EXE does not work either.

I'm really stumped. I was thinking maybe our license expired, but from what I see I would get nagged on that and would not be able to continue downloading updates.

[Tom2k8]

The following may apply to your situation:

1. You might be running other virtualization software like VirtualBox or VirtualPC, but if you do so, I rather expect an error message.

2. Your drive might be out of space. You can do a "Clean Manager" run to gain disk space.

3. You might be confronted with malware. Some malware can run in kernel mode and really mess up the configuration.

4. Your drive might have (logical) errors. The check disk utility can pinpoint problems. Mostly errors are logical.

5. Some update and/or new installed piece of software might conflict with VMWare.

You can try to look in your Event Viewer for errors. Changes are great that VMWare gives error other than the harmless Debug errors.

[joenj1]

Thanks for your reply! I will check into these suggestions.

FWIW I am running my vmware off a locally attached USB hard drive to get around the space issues. I have re-installed VMWare after completely removing it and all registry files, etc.

I am not running any other virtual PC software. We are pretty thorough in our anti-virus efforts.

Now maybe there was a new patch/app delivered, as this is a corporate machine and we get software pushes all the time. That is gonna be fun to troubleshoot...LOL

Here is another interesting tidbit: I may have mentioned it before, but I tried running my VMWare guest images on several desktops where I had installed VMWare workstation, without any luck.

Today I took my USB hard drive and went to another floor to try on another VMWare workstation, whrere I had NOT installed the software. I was able to successfully start and run ALL my host image files!

The investigation continues. Thanks to all on the forum for your help.

[joenj1]

Just a quick update FWIW.

I removed VMWare from one of my test machines (remember I have sufficient VMWare workstation licenses, but my Windows user account installed VMWare on about 8 machines).

Lo and behold I was able to get Vmware to start working on one of the test boxes, then another...

However, the guest images may load very slowly; up to one hour before they start.... sometimes they load normally .

So this is a mystery but I am able to work again.

Thanks to all for your suggestions!