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VMWare Server - errors opening virtual machines from Workstation/Player

Posted June 20th, 2008 in VMWare

VMWare Server 1.0 doesn't support the same set of features as the more recent versions of VMWare Workstation and VMWare Player, so you may not be able to open virtual machines created with more advanced features. However by simply modifying the configuration file you may be able to start up the virtual machine anyway, as shown in this post.

Unable to add the virtual machine to the inventory

When you try to add a virtual machine to the inventory and it has been created or upgraded with features that are not supported by VMWare Server, you'll see an error message like the one in the screenshot below ("unable to add virtual machine ... to the inventory. Configuration file was created by a VMWare product with more features than this version"):

Before doing anything to the virtual machine's confguration, it's a good idea to make a backup copy of it just in case anything goes wrong. Having done this, locate the .vmx file and open it in a text editor.

Look for the line that looks like this:

virtualHW.version = "6"

The version number might be different for you depending on the version the VM was create with. Change the version number to 4 so it looks like this and save the file:

virtualHW.version = "4"

Now you can successfully add the virtual machine to the inventory.

Disk was created by an unsupported version of VMWare

When you try to boot the machine up, you'll get a second error message relating to the virtual disk(s) as show in the screenshot below ("one or more of the disks used by this virtual machine was created by an unsupported version of VMWare Server"):

The solution for this is edit the .vmdk file for the virtual disk. Locate the line that looks like this (again, the version number may be different):

ddb.virtualHWVersion = "6"

and change it to this:

ddb.virtualHWVersion = "4"

Now you should be able to successfully boot the virtual machine.