How to access VM on new host?

[Erich Hammer]

My Win11 host machine spontaneously "blew up" with what turned out to be a bad processor. I've set up a new machine, and connected the second physical drive containing my 2 VMs, but VMWare won't boot them.

One of them starts to boot and then gives me the blue Windows recovery screen/options (none of which work). During the attempts at resolution on the host machine, it is possible a VM or two were open when the host bluescreened, so it is possible the guest Windows 11 files were corrupted. 

The other one tells me the virtual machine is encrypted and requires a password. I never consciously encrypted the VM, and don't have a clue what the password could be. I keep an extensive password database, but it has no record of a password for a virtual machine.

At this point, I can build a new VM, but I would really like to get at the files on the VMs -- especially the one that tries to boot. How can I mount these? Lots of AI answers say to "just go to File -> Map Virtual Disk..." in VMWare Workstation, but that doesn't exist in v17 (v17.6.4 which is what was installed/running previously). (Why would that be removed??)

It is possible the drive in the VM was encrypted using BitLocker (due to enterprise group policy). In my experience, there is normally an interface at the beginning of the boot process to enter a recovery code. Could having a new system with a new VMWare install cause that recovery to be unavailable? 

Help!

[Elliot Davis]

it depends what error code was the blue screen displaying? Most of the time bsod's can be caused by hardware mismatches or driver problems and sometimes system id's. if you want a more accurate answer search up the error code displayed, or just tell me and i'll help. (another thing you could try was if you have a past snapshot of the vm before the bsod you could try loading it?)

follow up if you find a solution or need help. best regards

[Erich Hammer]

I gave up on booting the VMs. I was able to access files in the non-encrypted VMDK via 7-Zip, so I'm just rebuilding from scratch. The encrypted VM was pretty generic for testing, so it can be rebuilt without too much problem. 

In creating a VM on this new system, I did get a prompt that encryption is required. I must have chosen to encrypt everything and somehow not saved the key (or assumed I would remember it). This time I'm encrypting the minimal, so if something like this happens again, at least the VMDK should be accessible (via 7-zip).