[Fixed] The Virtual Machine Appears to be in Use – Error in VMware Workstation 10 on Windows 8 or 7

This could be an issue/bug with VMware workstation to handle unexpected shutdown or restart of host computer when a virtual machine was working on VMware workstation. Recently I received an warning message when tried power on a virtual machine as “The Virtual Machine Appears to be in Use”. I’m sure that VM can not be in use, because I just opened the VMware workstation few seconds ago.

By trying to find out the solution, I came to know that this error may occurs when an unexpected shutdown or restart occurs to host computer while virtual machine is working. That’s quite true, because my host computer was restarted accidently before.

This is the warning message  “Virtual Machine Appears to be in Use” error in VMware Workstation 10 on Windows 8, you may face same issue on other host Operating Systems like Windows 8.1, 7 and XP too.

The work around to fix this issue is very simple. You are getting this error because some of the temporary working files of particular virtual machine are still available on same location.  Normally these files would be deleted when the guest virtual machine shuts down gracefully.

In may case, I could see following folders on same virtual machine’s working folder. These folders causing the problem to power of VM.

Delete the folders with .lck file extension.

If you can’t delete these files, make sure to close VMware workstation program and then try.

After deleting above .lck folders, I could able to successfully start virtual machine on VMware workstation 10 on Windows 8 host.

I hope this simple guide would be helpful.