VMWare Workstation: Virtual machine is in use, can't take ownership

August 20th at 12:00am

I will be taking the next week or so to learn about Java and Java based web services. For better compartmentalization I setup a Virtual Machine as my development environment using VMWare Workstation.

When I tried to power on the VM this morning I was greeted with a little red X by the VM icon and an error message when powering it up:

This virtual machine appears to be in use
If this virtual machine is already in use, press the "Cancel" button to avoid damaging it. If this virtual machine is not in use, press the "Take Ownership" button to obtain ownership of it.
Configuration file: C:\Users\<UserName>\VirtualMachines\<VMName>\<VMName.vmx>

When I clicked the Take Ownership button I received this error:

Taking ownership of this virtual machine failed.
The virtual machine is in use by an application on your host computer.
Configuration file: C:\Users\<UserName>\VirtualMachines\<VMName>\<VMName.vmx>.

Notes:

  • Windows 7 SP1 x64
  • VMWare Workstation Version 7.1.4 build-385536
  • VM Details: Centos 6 x64

In this case I knew that the VM was not in use by anyone else as I had just powered on my laptop. The steps to resolve this are (fortunately) quite straight forward:

Note: I recommend taking a backup before deleting any VM files

  1. In Windows Explorer, navigate to the folder which houses your VM files
  2. Delete the sub-folder named VMNAME.vmx.lck

    3. For example, if my VM was named CENTOSDEV the folder to delete would be CENTOSDEV.vmx.lck

  3. Open up VMWare Workstation and power on the VM

At this point the VM should start up successfully