If you’re running your virtual machines on VMware Workstation, there’s a built-in virtual disk manager (Vmware-vdiskmanager.exe) utility that can help you fix the most common VMDK file issues. Here’s how to go about launching and using the vmware-vdiskmanager.exe utility.
1. Launch Windows PowerShell (Admin) or Command Prompt (Admin)
2. Go to the VMware Workstation installation path; by default, it should be:
- C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Workstation – for Windows XP/Vista/7&8 (32-bits)
- C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Workstation - for Windows XP/Vista/7&8 (64-bits)
- C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Workstation – for Windows Server 2008 R2
3. Download VMware Player from its official page
4. Now run vmware-vdiskmanager -R “path to the corrupted vmdk file”
- E.g., vmware-vdiskmanager -R “D:\VMs\Windows 8\faultyvirtualdisk.vmdk”
The –R command will automatically try to repair the indicated VMDK file, which should fix the problem for you. If you use VMware vSphere, this VDiskManager isn’t inclusive in your package; you have to try another way.