MacLochlainns Weblog

Working on my stuff today, and the Belkin Flip DVI KVM Switch (product discontinued as of 2012) went nuts. First, I lost the keyboard, and then video. After a couple fruitless minutes, I did the unthinkable and opted for the 7 second to oblivion restart while two VMWare instances were up and running. By the way, I disconnected the Belkin Flip DVI KVM Switch because that was the last straw. For those looking at the product, I’d advise against it because infrequently the device transmits haze or golden flashing pixels. Also, this wasn’t the first time the keyboard disconnected itself without rhyme or reason.

All my VMs were locked when I rebooted. It didn’t matter whether they were running or not when I did the forced shutdown. This is not the image you want to see when you’re short on time against a fixed deadline.

The fix was simple. You go to the directory where each VM is located and find if you have locked files. You can run this command to find them:

$ ls *.lck

If they’re locked you’ll see something this:

564df021-1de5-dec0-942a-37635b35361b.vmem.lck:
M00680.lck
 
Windows XP Professional 32-bit.vmdk.lck:
M25400.lck
 
Windows XP Professional 32-bit.vmx.lck:
M47433.lck

You need to delete all three files, I used this command:

$ rm -rf *.lck

When you restart VMWare Fusion, everything will be fine. Hope this helps a few folks.