How to resolve "This virtual machine appears to be in use" error in VMware Workstation

Way back in 2008, Jason asks the VMware Community this question : Greetings... Recently I experienced a power failure at my offic...

Written By Unknown on Sunday 8 July 2018 | 06:18

Way back in 2008, Jason asks the VMware Community this question:

Greetings... Recently I experienced a power failure at my office when I was running two different virtual machines. Upon restarting, I am unable to connect to the machines as VMWare tells me "This virutal machine appears to be in use." If I press the "Take Ownership" button, it immediantely returns with a dialog box indicating "Taking ownership of this virtual machine failed." How do I unlock these machines?

Strangely enough, even though it's 6 years later, with VMware Workstation 10, the answer is still the same. As community moderator wila states:

close VMware Workstation
delete any .lck or .lock files and/or folders you see, in the directory of the problematic VM
run VMWare Workstation
start the VM

If you need further convincing the fix is that simple, see also my short video that demonstrates the fix. It'd seem that VMware would address this issue with a better recovery technique, given it's an error I've seen occasionally for many years myself. But hey, at least the fix is well documented!