Error message: ‘The operation failed because VMware Tools is still loading. Please try again momentarily.’

Generally, this error occurs when you try to shut the VM down too soon after starting it. Although the VM doesn’t appear busy in the Skytap web interface, VMware Tools may still be working.

It may be the case that VMware Tools is not installed on the VM or that the VM has an unsupported version of VMware Tools.

Possible cause What to do…
The VM is busy or VMware Tools hasn’t finished loading Wait a few minutes and retry the operation.
The guest OS or an application on the VM is waiting for user input From the SRA client view of the VM guest OS, close any open dialogs.
The VM is unresponsive In the SRA toolbar, click power-off and then choose REALLY power off to power off the VM.

Forcing the VM to power off may cause data loss. Choose this option as a last resort.

VMware Tools isn’t installed or an unsupported version is installed To check the VMware Tools version or to install a supported version of VMware Tools on the VM, see the following articles:
The VMware Tools service isn’t running To restart the service on a Windows VM:
From a command window in the SRA client view of the VM, type the following commands:
  • net stop vmtools
  • net start vmtools

To restart the service on a Linux VM:
From a terminal window in the SRA client view of the VM, type the following command:
  • sudo /etc/init.d/vmware-tools restart

If the suggestions above don’t solve the problem, check the following article for a list of specific errors: Skytap error messages

Advanced troubleshooting

If you can’t start or shut down the VM, contact Skytap Support.