Error while powering on: The file specified is not a virtual disk

[tr0users]

Hello,

I'm using VMWare Player v5.0.1 build-894247

My host is a win 7x64 laptop. I've been running a guest VM of Win2012 standard for a while and all has been good.

Every week I take a backup by shutting down the guest VM, closing VM player then copying the whole folder containing the VM to a network share.

Today I needed to go back to a previous backup. I restored the backed up folder from the network share to my laptop's C drive. However, when I tired to open this VM from VMWare Player I got the message: Error while powering on: The file specified is not a virtual disk

I have attached a copy of my vmx file. I created this by extracting from a log file. I've also attached a copy of the vmdx file.

When VMWare Player attempts to open the VM and fails does it write to any log file? I do have a vmware.log file in the same folder as my VM but this hasn't been updated since yesterday.

Could anyone please advise what I can do to recover my VM?

Many thanks,

Rob

[WoodyZ]

Okay the "Windows Server 2012.vmx" configuration file shows the virtual hard disk as "Windows Server 2012.vmdk" and this is a "twoGbMaxExtentSparse" type disk meaning the "Windows Server 2012.vmdk" is the "Disk DescriptorFile" and is text base while the binary portion of the virtual hard disk, in this case, is comprised of 31 Extents.  Since there is nothing wrong with the "Disk DescriptorFile" "Windows Server 2012.vmdk" file itself then either one or more of the binary extents, "Windows Server 2012-s001.vmdk" through "Windows Server 2012-s031.vmdk", are missing or corrupt.  If all the extents are there you can try to repair the disk using vmware-vdiskmanager.

[tr0users]

Thanks for the info. Is there any way I can get to a log file which may describe which "Extents" is at fault?

[WoodyZ]

Are all of the extents present?  If yes then try using vmware-vdiskmanager to repair the disk.

If all of the extents are not present and providing it's not the first and or last one missing and one has some data recovery needs to be attempted then one can try copying one of the empty extents, the ones that are 320 KB, to the missing extent's name and then mount the disk and attempt to recover user data from it.

As far as logging and which extent specifically I know that with VMware Fusion, which is what I use most of the time nowadays, it will be in either the vmware.log and or the vmware-vmfusion.log files however for VMware Player other then the vmware.log file you'd have to look in %TEMP%, on a Windows Host, for other VMware related log files.

[tr0users]

Yes all of the extents are present. I searched my local disk but can't find a copy of  vmware-vdiskmanager. Do you know if this can be downloaded? If I do find it, is there a command line option I need for disk repair? Thanks.

[WoodyZ]

I was about to say it's a part of VMware Workstation since you posted in the VMware Workstation Forum however I see you're using VMware Player and it's not included in that product however IIRC it's included in the Virtual Disk Development Kit.

An older copy is available as an attachment in this VMware KB although it may not work with the version of virtual hard disk you have, sorry just haven't tried it lately.  Have a look at Repairing a virtual disk in Fusion 3.1 and Workstation 7.1 (1023856), although I'd suggest using the one in the VDDK.