A virtual machine does not power on and displays in VMware Infrastructure Client as Invalid

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• A virtual machine does not power on
• A virtual machine displays in VMware Infrastructure (VI) or vSphere Client with the word Invalid after its name.
• If you right-click on the virtual machine, you have the option to power it on. If you initiate a power on, you see the error:
  
  A general system error occured: Not initialized

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 6.0, 7.0, 8.0

Resolution

This issue typically indicates that the virtual machine's VMX file is corrupted and must be recreated.

To recreate the VMX file:

1. If you can, right click the Virtual Machine and click Edit Settings... to see the current configuration for the Virtual Machine for reference.
2. While connected to vCenter Server, right click on a cluster or host and click New Virtual Machine...
3. When the Create New Virtual Machine wizard is displayed choose Custom and click Next.
4. Continue with the wizard tasks setting the configurations for the new virtual machine to match the original virtual machine's configuration. If possible, use Step 1's configuration references.
5. When the wizard asks you to Select a disk, select Use an existing virtual disk.
6. Click Browse and navigate to the datastore where the .vmdk or .vmdks that the original virtual machine was using before the issue.
7. Complete the configuration steps then click Finish.
8. Power on the new virtual machine and ensure it is working as expected.
   
   Note: The virtual disks for the new virtual machine are still located in the original virtual machine's storage location (directories/datastores) and have the same former names. You can consolidate these and rename the disks by doing a Storage vMotion or by cold migrating the virtual machine to a different datastore. Do not attempt to manually rename them or move them through the GUI as this can cause corruption or data loss to the original virtual disk files.