"Invalid fault" on "VirtualMachine.Unregister" while trying to purge a non-existent VM from vCenter

[WBSHOPPEN]

I don't know the particulars of how the original was deleted or renamed, but I know this:

- I have a VM named "VM19" (renaming it is possible, and doesn't help)

- it THINKS it has a VM19.vmx and VM19.vmdk file, but they aren't on the datastore (manually creating them and doing a migration doesn't help)

- it only shows up in vCenter (the vSphere client and vim-cmd don't see it directly on its alleged hypervisor)

Any ideas on how I unregister this thing?  I tried force-creating a new VM with the same names, but that conflicted.

[WBSHOPPEN]

Note: vCenter has also been restarted, 'services.sh restart' has been done on the HV, and I've even tried manually creating a dir and vmx/vmdk for it so it has something to delete.  Nada.

[WBSHOPPEN]

Are bumps relevant here? 😕