Verifying hosted virtual machine file integrity

Products

• VMware
• VMware Desktop Hypervisor

Issue/Introduction

This article guides you through determining if one or more of your virtual machine's files are corrupt. Corrupt virtual machine files can result in being unable to perform operations on a virtual machine. These operations include powering it on, resuming it from a suspended state, and taking a snapshot.

Symptoms:

• Cannot power on a virtual machine
• Unable to take a snapshot.
• Error taking a snapshot.
• You may see one or more of these errors:
• File not found.
• This file is required to power on this virtual machine.
• If this file was moved, please provide its new location.
• Check for missing files failed.
• A needed file was not found.
• Cannot open the disk or one of the snapshot disks it depends on.
• The handle is invalid.
• Unable to resume a virtual machine.
• Unrecoverable error. Unexpected signal 10.

Resolution

To determine if one or more corrupt virtual machine files is causing unexpected behavior resulting in the failure of a virtual machine operation:

Notes:

• For information on determining the location of virtual machine files, see Locating a hosted virtual machine's files on Windows and Linux Hosts.
• It is recommended that you reboot your host computer prior to following these troubleshooting steps.
• If you perform a corrective action in any of the following steps, attempt the virtual machine operation again.

 

1. If you are unable to perform operations with a virtual machine that has a snapshot, confirm that its parent disks have not been modified. For further information, see Verifying the integrity of hosted virtual machine parent disks.
    
2. If you are unable to resume a virtual machine that had been suspended:
    

   1. Navigate to the directory where the virtual machine's files are located.
   2. Delete the file that ends in .vmss as well as any files or folders that end in .lck.
   3. Open the .vmx file for editing.
   4. Find the line that starts with:
      
      checkpoint.vmState
       
   5. Remove everything between the quotation marks so it looks like:
      
      checkpoint.vmState = ""
       
   6. Save and close the .vmx file.
      
      Note: The suspend state of the virtual machine will be lost. This operation will replicate a physical machine having had its power unplugged.
       
3. Confirm that you have a valid virtual machine configuration (.vmx ) file. For further information, see Validating the .vmx settings of a virtual machine.
    
4. Confirm that you have a virtual disk (.vmdk ) file for each virtual disk defined for the virtual machine and that it is named correctly. For more information, see Verifying ESXi virtual machine file names.
5. If you are still unable to power on a virtual machine:
    
   1. Navigate to the directory where the virtual machine's files are located.
   2. Delete the file that ends in .nvram.
       
6. Check if the virtual machine runs on another host:
    
7. If it does, confirm the health of the host operating system on which the virtual machine will not run. For more information, see Verifying the health of an operating system.
8. If it does not, restore the virtual machine from backup or recreate it.