Cannot take ownership of two machines after power failure

[jmchristopher]

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

[wila · Accepted solution]

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

[jmchristopher]

Thanks!! I'm in!

Jason Christopher

Rockwell Automation

Phone: 585-750-8053

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

[wila]

Great to hear that it helped.

Thanks for the points!

--

Wil

[kvclarkusa]

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

[JustinKohnen]

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

[romieb]

Wil,

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

[mcsewillnotbeat]

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

[wgl3Dev]

Worked great for me also... Thanks

[KannanSubramani]

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

[pbraren]

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-workstati...

[aleeuk]

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

[Nkapure11]

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

[Arpit723]

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

[numanarvas]

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

[clinx]

Another big THANK YOU !

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

[PaulLabbe]

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.

[MrMeowington]

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!

[danielski25]

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

Ty

[continuum]

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