Unable to remove a VM from the Shared VMs list in 15.5.6

[JRClose]

I have a VM in Workstation 15.5.6 that was originally shared and working properly. While trying to learn a little more about sharing permissions (inside Workstation Pro, not Windows permissions) for shared VMs I managed to put myself in the position of not being able to stop sharing that VMs. I tried putting the permissions back as they were, but that didn't help. I finally decided to just remove the VM from Workstation, delete the VM from disk through Windows, which works. The VM runs fine, but now I can't remove the reference to the previous version that shows in the Library under Shared VMs in Workstation When I click the Remove option on the context menu for the reference, nothing happens - no errors, no hourglass, no nothing. I've uninstalled/reinstalled Workstation twice now, the second time manually removing any folders and files left behind in the user profile and Program Files folders, to no avail. I've also searched the registry without any success.

Has anyone else ever had this happen to them? I'm trying to avoid having to recreate my user profile or refresh Windows 10 to fix this.

Thanks in advance.

[bluefirestorm]

Have you tried looking at

%APPDATA%\VMware\preferences.ini

I have no idea if the MRU Shared VMs are listed here but the MRU non-shared VMs are in this file.

If you want to be cautious, make a backup of the file before editing/removing the Shared VM references in this file (if it is indeed in this file).

[JRClose]

Actually, I removed the VMware folders found under Appdata\Local and Appdata\Roaming after the second full uninstall of Workstation. I did look again after seeing your post and it only seems to show VMs that are not shared. I've also done searches for the name of the .vmx file on C:, and the full registry, and found no references to it whatsoever.

Leave it to me to find the whacko, oddball problem.

[bluefirestorm]

The chances of the list to be in Registry is low as the Shared VM feature is also available on Workstation 15.x and earlier on Linux hosts. From a shared code base point of view, it would be easier to be a file within the host instead of a OS-specific mechanism like the registry.

I have never used Shared Virtual Machines, but since it probably runs under a system or root (not necessarily the logged in user), it might be under the profile of the service or system account within with the workstation sharing service runs.

Try have a look at

C:\Users\All Users\VMware\hostd\config.xml

C:\Users\All Users\VMware\hostd\vmInventory.xml

and bunch of other files there.

[wila · Accepted solution]

The list of VMs for shared virtual machines is found at:

%PROGRAMDATA%\VMware\hostd\vmInventory.xml

--

Wil

[JRClose]

I found that late last night before I turned in. After uninstalling Workstation again, I found \VMware\hostd\vmInventory.xml under \ProgramData, deleted the folder, reinstalled Workstation and bada bing, bada boom, back to normal.

Thanks everyone for taking the time to respond.