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emmoon1981
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I need help :"Failed to start the virtual machine... َ"

hello everyone

I have installed ESXi 6 on a host and after a time system power fault and server power off  and then I power on the server and start the VMs . one of my VM has failed to start and I  see this error:

"

Failed to start the virtual machine.

Cannot open the disk 'VMname.vmdk' or one of the snapshot disks it depends on.

The system cannot find the file specified

VMware ESX cannot find the virtual disk "VMname.vmdk". Verify the path is valid and try again.

Module Disk power on failed.

Cannot open the disk 'VMname.vmdk' or one of the snapshot disks it depends on.

The system cannot find the file specified

VMware ESX cannot find the virtual disk "VMname.vmdk". Verify the path is valid and try again. "

I check my datastore and there is no such this file "VMname.vmdk" instead there is "VMname.flat.vmdk"

Is there any way to recover my VM ?

Please help

Thank you

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2 Replies
asajm
Expert
Expert

Hi emmoon1981

Check this VMware Knowledge Base

If you think your queries have been answered
Marking this response as "Solution " or "Kudo"
ASAJM
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a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

It's basically not a big issue to recreate a header/descriptor .vmdk file. However, if snapshots com into play, it's important do do the right steps to avoid data loss, or corruption.

If the VM doesn't have snapshots (i.d. <vmname>-00000x.vmdk files), you can recreate the missing .vmdk file by following the steps in https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1002511​.

If you are unsure, pleas don't try anything yourself, but post a complete list of files in the VM's folder, i.e. the output of ls -lisa from the command line.

André

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