VM will not start. Getting "VMDK file not found" error.

[TK98]

I had tried to remote into one of our VM's and found that it had frozen up. I shut down the VM and tried to power back on, but i get the error below:

Power On VM

Key

haTask-3-vim.VirtualMachine.powerOn-129462248

Description

Power On this virtual machine

Virtual machine

VM04

State

Failed - File VM04_0-000001.vmdk was not found

Errors

• VMware ESX cannot find the virtual disk "VM04_0-000001.vmdk". Verify the path is valid and try again.
• File system specific implementation of Lookup[file] failed
• File system specific implementation of LookupAndOpen[file] failed
• File system specific implementation of Lookup[file] failed
• File system specific implementation of Lookup[file] failed
• The system cannot find the file specified
• Cannot open the disk 'VM04_0-000001.vmdk' or one of the snapshot disks it depends on.
• Module 'Disk' power on failed.
• Failed to start the virtual machine.

I'm on ESXi Ver. 6.5.0 (Build 4887370).

I tried to restore from a snapshot, but that also failed.

I looked at the .vmsd file and everything looks like its pointing to the correct VM.

I realize that there are several posts with similar issues to this one, but i haven't got anywhere as of yet.

I will attach several files that pertain to this VM below, including the contents of the VM's folder when running the "ls -lisa" command.

Im pretty new to using ESXi and dealing with virtual machines like this.

Any help is appreciated..

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

The snapshot descriptor file is missing.
Please extract the recreated descriptor from the attached archive and upload it to the VM's folder.

Assuming that you have free disk space on your datastore, I'd recommend that you take another snapshot after uploading the file, and prior to powering on the VM.

André

[TK98]

Thank you! That got it to boot up and everything seems fine for now.

Do you have any idea how that file could have gone missing? I'm certain that no one else would've been on the ESXi host besides me and i did not mess with the datastore before this occurred.

Also, how did you recreate the descriptor file? Is the information in it specific for that VM besides the name?

Thanks again.

[a_p_]

Unfortunately, I can't tell you why this file dissipated.

Recreating the file was pretty easy, since all the required information could be taken from the base disk's descriptor .vmdk file which you provided.

André