ESXi - The attempted operation cannot be permited in the current state (Powered Off)

Tuesday, 07 April 2009 06:25

VMware - ESXi

Issue

When trying to power on a machine you will recieve the error message,

        The attempted operation cannot be permited in the current state (Powered Off)

Resolution

This issue is caused by your Virtual Machine still have a reference to something in its configuration file which is no longer available. This could be a removed ISO that is still mounted against its CD-ROM, a removed named serial pipe etc etc.

In order to resolve this issue you will need SSH access to your ESX box.

Below are the required steps involved,

1. SSH to your device
2. Find you configuration file for your Virtual Machine in question via the command find / -name *"vmx"
3. edit this file using the vi command. #vi [path].vmx
4. Within here you should find reference to a peripheral for your virtual machine that is causing the issue. You may have a reference to a ISO that is no longer in your datastore. Or a named piped that you have removed. For this hashed out the required line. Then save the file.
5. Now try to start your Virtual Machine.