Vmware Workstation - The file specified is not a virtual disk. Cannot open the disk xxxx or one of the snapshot disks it depends on

Question

I am running Windows 10 using VMware Workstation 16 on my Window 10 Laptop. All was well until I put my VM into suspended mode and then put my computer to sleep for the night. Once I booted it up it gave me an error saying that it couldn't find the virtual disk (sorry I don't have the exact error message). So, I provided it a VMDK file from yesterday. Now I am getting this error.

The file specified is not a virtual disk

Cannot open the disk 'C:\Users\[user]\Documents\Virtual Machines\Windows 1809 - Box\Windows 1809 - Box-000005-s015.vmdk' or one of the snapshot disks it depends on.

Module 'Disk' power on failed.

Failed to start the virtual machine.

I must've given it the wrong vmdk file. But when I go to Settings, it is not letting change the file path to a different vmdk.

I have two questions:

1. Why did the VM loose track of the VMDK disk when I put it into suspended mode?
2. How can I give VMware the correct VMDK so that the VM will boot up again?

Answer 1

There may be a stale lock on that file.

Right click on the virtual machine, then go to Open VM directory. If you find any .lck file with the same name as your virtual machine, delete it and restart the VM.

EDIT

Failing that, your vmdk may indeed be corrupted for some reason.

If this is the case, you may revert to a snapshot (if available).

If you don't have a snapshot, you can try to inspect the .vmdk file, or maybe a copy, with 7-zip (right click on the file -> Open archive), save the files you want to keep and then rebuilding the VM with the right image and settings. After you re-install the OS, copy the old files and you should be (relatively) fine.