removing a directory with VM with snapshots will break VM register

[Lubos Kosco]

create a VM
make a snapshot of the disk
remove the directory where VM is stored

now VirtualBox GUI and cli is in a weird state, since such machine cannot be unregistered nor deleted

I get errors like:

% VBoxManage unregistervm OpenSolaris0906
VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface Version 3.1.2
(C) 2005-2009 Sun Microsystems, Inc.
All rights reserved.

ERROR: Cannot unregister the machine 'OpenSolaris0906' because it has 1 snapshots
Details: code VBOX_E_INVALID_OBJECT_STATE (0x80bb0007), component Machine, interface IMachine, callee nsISupports
Context: "UnregisterMachine(uuid, machine.asOutParam())" at line 167 of file VBoxManageMisc.cpp

obviously the directory with the VDI and the snapshot are long gone from the disk ... :(

[Lubos Kosco]

workaround: create back the directory where the VM xml and the VDI was and then try to remove first snapshot, then snapshot from GUI list, then try removing the whole machine and it will finally work

[Frank Mehnert]

Removing the directory where the VM is stored is not allowed as long as the machine is registered. You can't manually change files from the .xml settings and then expect everything still works.