VMware Workstation crashes when copying folder to VM

Last Modified: Thu, 08 Jul 2021 15:19:28 +0000 ; Created: Fri, 02 Apr 2021 14:59:14 +0000

I005: FileIOCreateRetry: CreateFileW() returned ERROR_SHARING_VIOLATION, failing with FILEIO_CANCELLED

VMware Workstation Pro 15.5.7 build-17171714

Ubuntu 20.04 desktop guest VM with open-vm-tools
Was started from a snapshot (may not matter?).

Steps to reproduce

  1. On Windows host create a folder
  2. Create and save an Excel xlsx inside that folder
  3. Keep the Excel file open
  4. Right click to copy the folder from the host
  5. Attempt to paste the folder into a sub-folder on the guest VM
  6. My mouse went erratic and within 30 seconds the vmx just crashed

Solution

Version 15.5 is out of contract support so I couldn't contact VMware.

Update

Upgrading to version 16 stopped the crash, but you cannot copy a folder while an Excel file is open inside it. You will get "Cannot scan local directory. You might not have permission to perfrom the operation. Canceling teh file copy operation."

So upgrading stops the hard crash. You have to remember to close any locked files in the directory before you copy it.

Did not help

  • Uninstalled open-vm-tools, re-installed, rebooted, paste still crashed
  • Uninstalled open-vm-tools, installed vmware-tools, Segmentation fault during install, finished install, rebooted, paste still crashed