The VM failed to power on due to "system cannot find the file specified" or other "file not found" type errors

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

This article provides links to relevant documentation for resolving conditions where a virtual machine disk descriptor file is missing or invalid.

Symptoms:
A virtual machine (VM) cannot be powered on and you receive errors about missing files or disk dependency.

• In case of missing files, you see errors like:
  • Cannot open the disk '/vmfs/volumes/volume/vm/vm-000002.vmdk' or one of the snapshot disks it depends on.
  • Cannot open disk "/vmfs/volumes/volume/vm/vm-000002.vmdk": The parent virtual disk has been modified since the child was created (18).
  • VM's vmware.log file has messages similar to:
    • vmx| DISKLIB-LINK : "myvm.vmdk" : failed to open (The system cannot find the file specified). vmx| DISKLIB-CHAIN : "myvm.vmdk" : failed to open (The system cannot find the file specified).

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 6.0
VMware vSphere ESXi 7.0.0
VMware vSphere ESXi 6.7
VMware vSphere ESXi 6.5
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.5

Cause

These errors can occur if a virtual machine disk (VMDK) descriptor or data file is missing or if a snapshot chain has become inconsistent.

Resolution

 

Resolution when VM failed to power on due to "system cannot find the file specified" or other "file not found" type errors:

Note: If you are using Raw Device Mapping (RDM) disks, see the “Related Information” section for more file type information.

Verify that the virtual machine disk files are present as expected.

• For each disk – including snapshot disks – there should be a descriptor file in the form of vmName.vmdk.
• In addition, there should also be a flat or sesparse file for the base disk in the form of vmName-flat.vmdk or vmName-separse.vmdk.
• For snapshot disks, there should be a delta or sesparse file in the form of vmName-######-delta.vmdk or vmName-######-separse.vmdk.

If descriptor files are missing, the file need to be re-created.

Process to re-create descriptor file:

• To re-create a descriptor file for a base disk, see Recreating a missing virtual machine disk descriptor file
• To re-create a descriptor file for a snapshot disk, see Recreating a missing virtual disk (VMDK) descriptor file for delta disks

If data files (-flat, -delta or -sesparse) files are missing, the VM may need be restored from backup.

Additional Information

For RDM disks, there will not be a -flat or -sesparse file for the base disk. Physical-mode RDMs will have a file in the form of vmName-rdmp.vmdk. Virtual-mode RDMs will have a file in the form of vmName-rdm.vmdk.

• If an RDM descriptor is missing, it can also be re-created. For more information, see Recreating pass-through Raw Device Mapping (RDM) files for a virtual machine

For more information, see:

• For more information on an issue with similar symptoms, see An ESXi/ESX host reports VMFS heap warnings when hosting virtual machines that collectively use 4 TB or 20 TB of virtual disk storage (1004424).

For other information, see:

• Verifying ESX/ESXi virtual machine file integrity
• "The parent virtual disk has been modified since the child was created" error
• Powering on a virtual machine on an upgraded host fails with the error: File [VMFS volume] VM-name/VM-name.vmdk was not found