Knowledge Base

Locating VMware Workstation 6.x and VMware Server 1.x virtual machine files

1. Select the virtual machine from the VMware application window
2. Click Edit virtual machine settings.
3. Click Options.
4. Click Advanced. Look at the bottom right of the Virtual Machine Settings window.
   
   Note: If the path to the log file is blank, the log file is in the same location as the configuration file.

Locating virtual machine files on a Windows host

1. Select Start>Run. The Run dialog appears.
2. Type %userprofile% .
3. Click OK to see the home directory.

1. Open a command prompt. For more information, see Opening a command or shell prompt (1003892).
   
   
2. Type the following and press Enter:
   
   C:\>dir \*.vmx /s/p

This returns directory paths to all virtual machine configuration files. Based on the name of the virtual machine whose files you are looking for, use Windows Explorer to navigate to the location of the directory containing its .vmx file.

Locating virtual machine files on a Linux or Mac OS host.

To determine the default location of virtual machine files for the product in use:

• In VMware Workstation or VMware ACE, the default location of virtual machine files is the directory /home/username/vmware , where username is the user who created the virtual machine.
  
  
• In VMware Fusion, the default location of virtual machine files is the folder Virtual Machines in the Documents folder of the user who created the virtual machine. To access this when logged in as that user:
  
  
  1. Click Go.
  2. Click Home.
  3. Double-click Documents.
     
     
• In VMware Server, the default location of virtual machine files is the directory /var/lib/vmware/Virtual Machines .

1. Open a shell prompt. For more information, see Opening a command or shell prompt (1003892).
   
   
2. Type the following and press Enter:
   
   find / -name "*.vmx"
   
   
3. The results of step 2 list all virtual machine configuration files. Search the results for the name of a virtual machine file you are interested in locating. The results also list the path to the directory where these files are located.

For the location of the virtual disk files, access the directory where the configuration file ( .vmx ) is located. If there are no .vmdk files there or you suspect that there are not enough .vmdk files to account for the number of virtual disks for this virtual machine, edit the configuration file in a text editor. Search this file for all lines of text ending in .vmdk . Any virtual disks whose files are not located in the current directory have their full path listed on this line of text.