Tuesday 15 May 2007

VMWare Server: Virtual machine config file is invalid

Have you experienced this error after a host lock up on VMWare Server? This can be caused by a number of things from duplicate/invalid entries in the config .vmdk file (compare it to others), missing files, corrupt disk volumes or corrupt memory files. In my case the problem was with corrupt memory files and the following steps resolved it:

Reboot the host server to remove any file locks
Delete the .vmem and .vmem.lck files in the faulty VM's working directory.

The virtual machine can then be powered back on.

Please approach this with caution on production VM servers as any transactions that are in memory and not committed to disk will be lost.

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

thanx 4 ya help, i also had to restart the VMware Registration Service

n0m0r3

razan said...

it Worked, Started VM successfully

Anonymous said...

It works great! Thanks a lot!

Anonymous said...

GREAT !!!!! I've solved the same problem with my vm. Thanks again !!! Stefano

Anonymous said...

great tip. worked for me. thanks!

Anonymous said...

Thanks for this GREAT trick ! It worked perfectly for me to clean VM up after XP Pro host lockup ... VM restarted without any problem, no software or data loss

God bless you for sharing such good hints !

Anonymous said...

got the exact same message and checking in VMserver, i have gone from 256MB to 32MB. Have removed vmem file to no avail. There are no .lck files on the system. Time for a full rebuild?

Rob Head said...

Perhaps, but there are many things that could cause this issue. I would compare your VMDK file against one that is working first and see if there are any anomolies.

Anonymous said...

thanks dude life saver.

Anonymous said...

Just the help I needed for a VM that crashed after my host ran out of hard drive space. OOPs! VM is alive and kicking after following your suggestions and a little drive cleaning of course.

Anonymous said...

This work if you don't want or cant restart the host.

after removing the files, stop all vmware services then go to the task manager and kill the vmware-vmx.exe process. restart the services and start the vmachine.

Anonymous said...

thank you very much for this information !

Unknown said...

Thanks very much for this information

Anonymous said...

Thanks a lot - it worked.

To avoid restarting of the machine, I just stoped all VMWare services, deleted the files and started the services again.

Anonymous said...

Thank you so much... it worked.

Anonymous said...

Hi... i have the same problem... i have a VMware on XP with linux redhat 4 on the vmware....i was working on linux and was out of spaca and it crashed.... now if i restart the VMware it gives an error... can someone help?

Anonymous said...

thanks for this! you're a lifesaver!

Anonymous said...

thanks so much. it works ^^

Anonymous said...

did not work :(