I have VMware Server RC2 installed on a Windows 2003 Server machine. It is running a Windows XP guest session. Every couple of days, the guest session locks up with the following error message:
"Operation on file "c:\virtual machines\pc-antivirus\PC-Antivirus.vmdk" failed (The process cannot access the file because another process has locked a portion of the file).
Choose Retry to attempt the operation again.
Choose Abort to terminate this session.
Choose Continue to forward the error to the guest operating system."
I initially though that the antivirus on the host system might be causing the problem so I set the auto-protect not to scan the Virtual Machines folder. The same error message popped up a couple of days later.
Now it seems that whatever is locking the file is doing so only momentarily. The problem is that the guest session will stay unavailable until either retry, abort or continue is pressed in the error dialog. Aside from whatever is causing the problem initially (which is what I am really trying to find the answer to), this is poor error handling for a product that is supposed to run unattended in the background. There should be some means of clearing the error message without human intervention for temporary issues in order to get the session going again. I don't like waking up at 2:00 AM and dialing into the system just to click "retry".
Any help is appreciated.