Problem

When trying to Power On an old VM I was greeted with this message:

I checked the Datastore and everything seemed to be present and correct. I tried to migrate the VM to a different Host, but again I was shown this error. A quick Google didn't show up anything useful so I decided to check the logs.

running the command  tail /var/log/vmware/hostd.log -f whist trying to Power On the VM flagged these error messages:

• [2010-03-24 12:11:10.547 'BaseLibs' 129907632 info] readlink /var/run/vmware/7f0f49adb5092b09694cdf456a488d6c: No such file or directory
• [2010-03-24 12:11:10.547 'BaseLibs' 129907632 info] readlink /var/run/vmware/%2fvmfs%2fvolumes%2f4ad45c8d%2ddb2eadd5%2d411f%2d00237d3c8b86%2fTEST%2dVWB01%2fTEST%2dVWB01%2evmx: No such file or directory

Solution

Remove the troubled Virtual Machine from the Inventory:

• Display the virtual machine in the inventory.
• Right-click the virtual machine and select Remove from Inventory.
• To confirm that you want to remove the virtual machine from the inventory, click OK.

Re-add the Virtual Machine back into vCenter:

• Browse the datastore where the VM's files are located
• Right Click on the VM's .vmx file and select Add to Inventory
• Follow the Wizard

Once you can see the VM in vCenter, try and power it on. Hopefully this should have fixed your issue.