VMware Workstation This virtual machine appears to be in use.

If you are running your own LAB with VMWare workstation and getting the erros “ This  virtual machine apperas to be in use” here is qucik solution.

If you try to take the ownership of the virtual host, you will receive “Could not open virtual machine …” warnings and it will ask you if you want to remove it from library. Which for obvious reasons you would not want to do that

Open the virtual machine folder and locate the folders ends wih .LCK

You will need to delete them……

If you try to take the ownership of the virtual host, you will receive “Could not open virtual machine …” warnings and it will ask you if you want to remove it from library. Which for obvious reasons you would not want to do that

After deletion you will noticed the Virtual host will start with no issues. What are these folders and files in them for ? The running VM machnine will lock the files to prevent conflics and consistency problems on the virtual disks, if not they could get corrupted.The lock files gets created on the same directory as VMDK files. If you like to read more here is the article.

Oz Casey, Dedeal (MVP North America)
MCITP (EMA), MCITP (SA)
Security+, Project +, Server +
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