VMware Fusion “Internal Error” and how to correct it!
If you’re like me, all of a sudden you’re getting an “Internal Error” and you’re like WTF?! IT WAS WORKING A MINUTE AGO! AHHHHHHHH!!! And you go through the normal course of action of googling for answers only to find each and every scenario doesn’t apply to you [Heck, you even DO what they suggest and it still doesn’t work!] Well, hopefully this finds you in good tidings and will solve your problem fast and furious!
Disclaimer: I try to quantify the scenario which leads up to this particular version of the error and a quick and hearty resolution. If your situation does not meet this particular criteria.. you may want to go back to searching and trying the other options! Unfortunately, this has hit me too many times for me to let it go unpublished! :)
As with most things, I try to be as SPECIFIC as possible so you can get to the point and solve (even with this verbose dialogue ;))
Standard Operation
There you are, just sitting along using VMware Fusion with whatever your VM type happens to be, and then either you close the lid on your mac, or your VM starts to suspend itself [Or you manually suspend it, doesn’t matter] But wait. The VM gets to 99% or so, but never officially ends/closes/suspends. You cannot “resume” a VM which thinks it is still suspending, so you’re forced to do the following:
Killing VMware Fusion
Well, that seemed straightforward enough! Wham BAM! Process Killed, am I right?! [No. I’m not right ;)]
Internal Error
You re-launch VMware Fusion, go to open up your VM and OMG IM GETTING INTERNAL ERROR WTF IS GOING ON HERE!
Some of you, first action you’ll take is to go into the VMware Fusion Package and start to remove .LCK files and everything under the sun because you’re panicked! AHHH PANIC! Well, panic no longer! There is hope!
What causes Internal Error
If you open up Terminal and take a look at your /var/log/system.log you’ll find the following is happening {cat /var/log/system.log}
Jun 24 12:15:29 CXI [0x0-0x86e86e].com.vmware.fusion[47446]: VMware Fusion Error:
Jun 24 12:15:29 CXI [0x0-0x86e86e].com.vmware.fusion[47446]: Failed to get exclusive lock on the configuration file. Another VMware process might be running using this configuration file.
Recovering from Internal Error
There are two quick ways to get out of this. One is a reboot [lame!] And the other is to kill the running instance using kill
Use PS to find the process in question [ps –axwww | grep vmware]
Then use Kill to kill the process in question! [kill –9 ProcessID]
Post-Mortem
Hopefully you found this useful and if not… I’m sure I’ll run into this situation AGAIN and forget how I solved it, and come back to this blog post of my own in order to correctify the situation! :) If you find this useful at all, let me know so I can gauge just how many of us experience this kind of pain :)
Take care and Good Luck! :)
