I have been using VMware to run a virtual machine for testing my apps, but suddenly, when I start up my VM Instance, it runs for a short while, then starts showing:
The operation on file "C:\…-disk1.vmdk" failed.
If the file resides on a remote file system, make sure that the network connection and the server where this disk resides are functioning properly. If the file resides on removable media, reattach the media.
Select Retry to attempt the operation again.
Select Cancel to end this session.
Select Continue to forward the error to the guest operating system.
Retry just continues to show the same message, Continue allows me to use the VM for a random period of time between as long as it takes me to move the mouse a pixel up to a few minutes, and Cancel just closes the Instance, but leaves all the locks in place.
It also shows a brief error message (after clicking Cancel):
VMware Player cannot synchronize with the disk before cancelling
Disk 'C:\…-disk1.vmdk' may be Inconsistent
VMware Player doesn't come with vmware-vdiskmanager, but I downloaded a copy from the VMware site, and ran vmware-vdiskmanager -R C:\\...-disk1.vmdk, but it simply states No errors were found on the virtual disk.
I then ran a secondary, older VM that I had been using before my present one, and after starting that one up, the same errors appeared. Has something gone wrong with VMware Player, or has something tragic happened to my system (possibly the RAM/Disk)?
Best Answer
Found the problem. About 3 months ago, I compressed my entire hard drive to save space, and it was quite significant. But it had compressed the vm disk files as well, and vmware player had not detected it.
Windows was also saying that I couldn't decompress the file due to a file system limitation, so I used
vdiskmanager -r <...> -t 1 <...>to convert my disks into smaller ones, I was able to decompress them and my VM's are back up and running.