Tag Archives: power on

VMware – This Virtual Machine Appears To Be In Use

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KB ID 0000959 

Problem

I wanted to give a copy of a VM to a colleague, so I removed all the snapshots, and cloned one of my test VM’s. When I went to power on the original this happened;

The virtual machine appears to be in use.

If this virtual machine is not in use press the “Take Ownership” button to obtain ownership of it. Otherwise press the “Cancel” button to avoid damaging it.

Configuration file: {path-to-vmx-file}

And when I attempted to ‘Take Ownership’ of the machine, that failed also;

Could not open virtual machine: {path-to-vmx-file}
Taking ownership of this virtual machine failed.
The virtual machine is in use by an application on your host computer.
Configuration file: {path-to-vmx-file}

Solution

I knew it was not in use, as there was only me using my laptop. So I figured VMware had some files ‘locked’. Navigate to the folder that holds the VM’s files, (Note: The path is on the error message above).

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Locate any folders that have a .lck extension appended to their name (as above), and move them to another folder. Then attempt to power on your VM.

Related Articles, References, Credits, or External Links

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VMware ‘Virtual Machine MessageVirtualized Intel VT-x/EPT is not supported on this platform’

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KB ID 0000777 

Problem

Everytime you go to power on a virtual machine you get asked the following question,

Virtual Machine Message
Virtualized Intel VT-x/EPT is not supported on this platform.
Continue without virtualized Intel VT-x/EPT?

And if you choose No it throws up an error. You need to choose Yes before it will let you power on the VM.

Solution

This is a problem of my own making, a while ago I was trying to enable Hyper-V on a Windows 8 VM, and needed to make a change in my VMware environment so I could add this Windows feature to the VM. I enabled the change globally on the ESX host (Instead of just on the machines .vmx file which would have caused me less problems!).

So I needed to remove the change I made.

1. Connect to the ESX host via SSH, and login.

2. You need to edit the /etc/vmware/config file, and remove the line I had added earlier [highlighted below].

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vi /etc/vmware/config

Navigate to the line you want to remove with the arrow keys > Press I > remove the line > press {Esc}

:wq

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Related Articles, References, Credits, or External Links

VMware Workstation – Error – “Virtualized Intel VT-x/EPT is disabled”