2011
08.14

You might get this message when the virtual machine you’re opening is out of disk space or at least it thinks it is.

The file system upon which ‘~/VMware/Windows XP Professional – SP3’ resides is critically low on free space. Allowing this virtual machine to continue may cause it to fail unexpectedly. VMware Workstation has paused this virtual machine because the disk on which the virtual machine is stored is almost full. To continue, free up at least 495.2 MB of disk space.

When booting you’ll get stuck in an endless loop. To ignore the above warning and be able to start again add the line below to your (Windows XP Professional).vmx file.

mainMem.freeSpaceCheck = "FALSE"

16 comments so far

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  1. df -h does not lie

    That was _really_ helpful 😉

    As to why a disk with 20GB free is bringing up this error…

  2. Philip

    Lovely, exactly what I was looking for!

  3. Jordan

    works like a charm!

    Thanks!

  4. Hans

    Thank you very much. I thought of know more or less 90% of all the vmx parameters, but this one slipped through.

  5. Paul

    Thanks very much for that fix!

  6. Andy

    Hi, where precisely do I find my (Windows7).vmx file?

  7. See this article

  8. Paul H.

    Really, really useful! Thank you!!

  9. Mitzm

    Brilliant solution. Thx.

  10. Julian

    Thanks man, it works 😀

  11. Fernando Machado

    Worked for on Vmware version 10

  12. deek

    HI. I’m a newb, so do you mind walking me through how to do this exactly?

    Do I write this single line of text in a notepad or something? Thanks.

  13. Mia

    Hi. I cannot get into my VM because of this issue. I have a Mac and when I try to launch the VM, this error appears. I have deleted every single file on my Mac! Only applications are left and it hasn’t helped. Can I access this file from my Mac? Thank you!!!

  14. Eng

    Worked fine, thank you.

  15. Great

    This was a live saver i had been looking for this whole time made me dislike the VMWARE….but i had problem locating the file on macbook but got it fixed now Thanks Ten Much

  16. Colin

    Thanks very much for that fix!