Can not unregister disk or vm when there are snapshots registered, but not present

[camper]

How to reproduce:

• create a virtual machine and a virtual disk
• create one or more snapshots of the virtual machine
• delete the .vdi files in the snapshot directory of the virtual machine
• you can't unregister the virtual disk or virtual machine any more => zombi virtual machine

[MrX1980]

I have a similar failure:

VirtualBox 2.1.0 (updated from 2.0.4) Host: WinXP Pro 64-bit Guest: Win2003 64-bit

Machine -> Delete "Cannot unregister the machine ... because it has 1 snapshots." VirtualBox2.10_Error_002.jpg

If I try to delete the snapshot in VirtualBox, I get a windows error report: VirtualBox2.10_Error_003.jpg VirtualBox2.10_Error_004.jpg 714a_appcompat.txt VBox_cannot_unregister.log

[Dmitry A. Kuminov]

Yes, this is a known limitation. The reason why unregistering the VM with snapshots is forbidden in the first place is because there is no legal way to register it back afterwards. And also because it would most likely leave a lot of data (other diffs, saved states) on the user's hard disk which he may not notice.

The only way to remove such a broken VM from the list of known VMs for now is to manually edit VirtualBox.xml (and delete the relevant VM subdirectory if needed).

The problem will be addressed as part of the VM portability feature (which is being worked on).

[aeichner]

Please reopen if still relevant with a recent VirtualBox release.