topic Re: Cannot take ownership of two machines after power failure in VMware Workstation Pro Discussions

Cannot take ownership of two machines after power failure

jmchristopher — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 21:24:49 GMT

Greetings... Recently I experienced a power failure at my office when I was running two different virtual machines. Upon restarting, I am unable to connect to the machines as VMWare tells me "This virutal machine appears to be in use." If I press the "Take Ownership" button, it immediantely returns with a dialog box indicating "Taking ownership of this virtual machine failed." How do I unlock these machines?

Thanks in advance

Jason

Re: Cannot take ownership of two machines after power failure

wila — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 21:51:07 GMT

Hi,

First shut down VMware Workstation then go and have a look at the folders where your virtual machines are stored.

It is highly likely that you will see some .lck or .lock files and/or folders. Which ones you will see (lck or lock) depends on the version of your VMware product.

Delete those files (move them to another folder if you are more comfortable with that) and then go back to VMware Workstation.

Open those virtual machines again and chances are pretty big that they will work as they used to be.

good luck!

--

Wil

Re: Cannot take ownership of two machines after power failure

jmchristopher — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 18:59:11 GMT

Thanks!! I'm in!

Jason Christopher

Rockwell Automation

Phone: 585-750-8053

http://www.rockwellautomation.com<http://www.rockwellautomation.com/

Re: Cannot take ownership of two machines after power failure

wila — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 12:51:29 GMT

Great to hear that it helped.

Thanks for the points!

Wil

Re: Cannot take ownership of two machines after power failure

kvclarkusa — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 10:45:24 GMT

Wil--

I encountered this very same issue this week and this solution worked great. For anyone else who has this problem, I documented the symptoms and steps I took in a little more detail on my blog:

Thanks again!

Ken

Re: Cannot take ownership of two machines after power failure

JustinKohnen — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 04:25:05 GMT

Wil-

It might be been three years since your post, but you solution worked great for me.

Once I deleted the .lck folder, VMWare Workstation 6.0 let me back into the VM

Thanks for the Help,

Justin

Re: Cannot take ownership of two machines after power failure

romieb — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 16:52:09 GMT

Wil,

Thank you very much! This solution worked for me as well and I'm using a VMWare player.

Re: Cannot take ownership of two machines after power failure

mcsewillnotbeat — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 20:03:36 GMT

Hi,

This happened to me when I couldn't shut down properly. This answer has solved my problem!

I have had to visit these communities alot since I'm new trying virtualization and have been helped alot by posts on here.

Many thanks

Re: Cannot take ownership of two machines after power failure

wgl3Dev — Fri, 01 Nov 2013 17:28:33 GMT

Worked great for me also... Thanks

Re: Cannot take ownership of two machines after power failure

KannanSubramani — Mon, 31 Mar 2014 04:59:12 GMT

Wil - Thanks, I faced same issue today and your fix helped to resolve. Appreciate it!.

Re: Cannot take ownership of two machines after power failure

pbraren — Mon, 07 Apr 2014 19:24:24 GMT

Had this circumstance hit me (yet again), this time after a laptop was running a VM, and the laptop wasn't shut down properly. Same fix for this very old issue, even on VMware Workstation 10. Decided to record video and write a short post about this simple fix:

www.tinkertry.com/how-to-resolve-this-virtual-machine-appears-to-be-in-use-error-in-vmware-workstation

Re: Cannot take ownership of two machines after power failure

aleeuk — Thu, 23 Apr 2015 12:50:17 GMT

In may case a reboot was also needed - but YES again thanks to all the procedure works

Re: Cannot take ownership of two machines after power failure

Nkapure11 — Mon, 22 Feb 2016 06:54:13 GMT

Open your Virtual machine Path inside the file plz delete .lck or .lock file and then try . your problem will resolved

Thank you,

@Nikhil Kapure

Re: Cannot take ownership of two machines after power failure

Arpit723 — Mon, 26 Dec 2016 04:58:38 GMT

Thank you, it solved my problem. So, precise and very good answer, thanks

Re: Cannot take ownership of two machines after power failure

numanarvas — Wed, 11 Jan 2017 22:36:42 GMT

your comment helped me after 9 years since you wrote. Thanks a lot @wila

Re: Cannot take ownership of two machines after power failure

clinx — Mon, 15 May 2017 03:19:00 GMT

Another big THANK YOU !

And thank google for finding this thread and putting it up top.

Re: Cannot take ownership of two machines after power failure

PaulLabbe — Thu, 18 May 2017 13:52:42 GMT

In my case, I launched VmWare as Administrator and was able to open, then close the Vm, which removed the locks. I logged out of VmWare and launched it again with my user account. I was then able to open the Vm.

Re: Cannot take ownership of two machines after power failure

MrMeowington — Mon, 27 Aug 2018 15:34:16 GMT

Paul--

Thank you! I can now access my virtual machines using that simple method.

I guess opening it as an admin was all it needed!

Re: Cannot take ownership of two machines after power failure

danielski25 — Tue, 18 Sep 2018 21:15:51 GMT

I did not see this answered here. If I click Remove, are my VMs toast?

Re: Cannot take ownership of two machines after power failure

continuum — Wed, 19 Sep 2018 13:37:23 GMT

> If I click Remove ....
Removing lock-files will not harm your VM.
If you meant something else - please be more specific.