Workstation 16 Pro - Failed to start the virtual machine

[ksukat]

Last night, my PC crashed due to a power outage.  My VM was running on the PC at the time of the crash.  Came in this morning, powered on the pc.  When I tried to start my VM, I get the following message:

The process cannot access the file because another process has locked a portion of the file.

Cannot open the disk 'C:\...\myvm\myvm-00001.vmdk' or one of the snapshop disks it depends on.

Module 'Disk' power on failed.

Failed to start the virtual machine.

I googled the error and the recommendation was to delete all the lck files in the vm folder.   unfortunately there are no *.lck files in the folder.

how to I fix this issue?

thanks.

[NateNateNAte]

Still a common problem with Workstation. 

You have the right solution.  But curious that the files/folders are not showing in the vm directory folder.  

Also assuming you found nothing when searching for *.lck...

Any chance you have a back-up that you can use to restore after blowing away the current VM folder?

[ksukat]

No current backup of the VM.   The file it was complaining about "myvmname-000001..vmdk" is not in the vm folder and the dates on the files in the VM folder are old (not current).  I did check for .lck files and none exist in the vm folder.   I have changed nothing.  The only thing I've done is back the folder up to a network server as a safety step.

[a_p_]

With the default virtual disk file format used, a virtual disk, or snapshot consists of multiple .vmdk files. A descriptor file .vmdk file like "myvmname-000001.vmdk", and sevearl .vmdk data files like "myvmname-000001-s00x.vmdk". If one, or more of the data files are missing, or are coorupted, VMware Workstation will show to error message that you see, but always with the descriptor file's name.

André

[ksukat]

how do I recover?  I desperately need this vm.

[a_p_]

It depends on what's wrong/missing.

A helpful first task is to provide a complete file listing.

To do this, run dir *.* /one > filelist.txt from within the VM's folder, and attach the resulting filelist.txt to your next reply.

André

[ksukat]

OK.  Have attached the file list.

[a_p_]

Are you sre that you listed the files from the correct folder?
At least the log files should be current, unless logging has been disabled in 2021.

It it is the correct folder, then I'm afraid that only some data recovery tool (if at all) can help.
Another thing is to check whether the missing file has been quarantined by your A/V for whatever reason.

André

[ksukat]

Its also weird that all the files have older modified dates.  The VM in question is used every week day.

Workstation 16 pro won't do something weird if the vm is corrupt, like falling back to an earlier snapshot automatically?

[a_p_]

No, it does not.

For VMware Workstation, the V;'s files are treated like documents for e.g. Word.

André