Taking Ownership Of This Virtual Machine Failed – VMware Workstation

When trying to open a VM in VMware Workstation, you get this error:

VMware Workstation

Could not open virtual machine: X:\Folder\VM.vmx

Taking ownership of this virtual machine failed.

A serious error occurred: Permission denied.

Configuration file: X:\Folder\VM.vmx.

Typically VMware Workstation complains that taking ownership failed because either the permissions on the drive the VM is on are incorrect, or the virtual machine is being accessed by another process.

To fix this, first try rebooting the VM host. If this doesn’t work, check the permissions are correct on the VM configuration files. Finally if that doesn’t fix it, close VMware Workstation and delete the *.lck files in the virtual machine’s folder.

Interestingly, it’s also worth running VMware Workstation as an administrator (Right click, run as Administrator – even if you’re logged into an administrator account).