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If VMWare Fusion crashes for some reason and will no longer let you access your virtual machines, rather displays that they are in use, you may try the following steps to resolve the issue.

1.  Quit VMWare Fusion.

Before you start, make sure that you have totally quit VMWare Fusion, and it is not running in the background.

2.  Launch Terminal.

I decided to go into Terminal to remove the lock files given the Finder does not show hidden files and folders by default.  (You could theoretically do all of this in the Finder if you enable viewing of hidden files and folders, but for me it was easier to just go straight to Terminal).

3.  Change to the Virtual Machine directory.

By default, VMWare creates a directory under your user Documents folder called “Virtual Machines.localized” with subfolders for each VM.

On your Mac this directory name will likely be different than mine (it is based on the name of your actual VM).  However as an example, on my Mac the directory is:

Therefore, the command to change into that directory (from the default terminal prompt which starts you in your home directory, i.e. /Users/kenclark) is:

4. Verify there are lock files in this directory.

Once you are in the VM’s directory, you should see a number of lock files intermixed with the VM files.  To do this, just enter the following Unix command to list the directory contents:

As an example, on my Mac I saw four lock files in addition to VMWare’s system files.  They were:

5.  Create a directory to back up the lock files.

Theoretically you could simply delete the lock files, but I am more conservative and did not want to risk really messing anything up on my Mac.  I created a temp directory for the lock files rather than deleting them.

Here’s the command to make a backup directory I am calling “lockfiles-temp”.  (Please note I am assuming you are in the Virtual Machine directory when you do this).

6.  Move the lock files into the temp directory.

Again I moved the lock files rather than deleting them to ensure I could rollback if this did not work.  Here is the command:

At this point you should verify the move was successful, by executing another directory listing:

When you do this, you should see no lock files in the VM directory.

7.  Launch VMWare and Start your Virtual Machine.

Now, power up VMWare and you should see a new screen that shows your virtual machine is unlocked and either “Powered Off” (as mine shows below) or “Suspended” – in either case it will be ready to start up.