Investigating virtual machine lock files in Fusion

Products

• VMware Desktop Hypervisor

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

Fusion experiences any of these issues when powering on a virtual machine:

• Fails to open a disk or snapshot disk that the virtual machine uses
• Fails to lock a file
• Errors that a virtual machine is already powered on or is in use by someone else

Environment

VMware Fusion 2.x
VMware Fusion 10.x
VMware Fusion Pro 10.x
VMware Fusion 11.x
VMware Fusion 3.x
VMware Fusion Pro 11.x
VMware Fusion 1.x
VMware Fusion Pro 8.x
VMware Fusion 8.x
VMware Fusion 5.x
VMware Fusion 6.x
VMware Fusion 7.x
VMware Fusion 4.x

Resolution

These issues occur when lock files or folders exist on a virtual machine.

 

To resolve the issue, remove all lock folders and files that are preventing the virtual machine from powering on:

1. Verify that the virtual machine is powered off. For more information, see Investigating if a hosted virtual machine is powered on (1003844).
   
   Warning: Deleting lock files or folders associated with a virtual machine when it is powered on may result in unrecoverable data loss.
2. Navigate to the location of the virtual machine's files. For more information, see Locating the virtual machine bundle in VMware Fusion (1007599).
    
3. Delete (or Move to Trash) any files or folders that end in .lck.

Additional Information

Lock files and folders are created when a virtual machine is powered on and are used to prevent multiple VMware processes from accessing the same virtual machine at the same time.

Lock files and folders are left in a virtual machine's directory when a virtual machine is shut down unexpectedly and Fusion fails to perform routine removal of these files.