after remove snapshot, virtual machine got blue screen when boot up

Question

My ESX 4.1 was running out of disk space so that I try to delete the snapshot, it seems that the snapshot was not remove completely so that the SBS2011STD-000005.vmdk still exist then I remove the current hard drive which using SBS2011STD-000005.vmdk and then create new disk by using existing virtual disk SBS2011STD.vmdk

After, I reboot the virtual machine, it got blue screen then the virtual machine restart.

I have found this VMware KB which is about consolidating snapshots

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&docTypeID=DT_KB_1_1&externalId=1007849

But I am not sure if this is the way to resolve this problem.

Answer 1

If for some reason the snapshot was linked to the running machine, or it had not completed the integration into the running machine, you may have deleted files that were still in use or necessary for the "current" state of the VM.

You would have to restore from backup to get it running again, from my experiences.

Answer 2

You do not ever, never, ever remove snapshots from the datastore manually. It will break your machine.

A snapshot should only be taken when testing something with unknown or potentially harmful effects. It impacts the performance of a virtual machine. This is based on how long it has been in place and how much the virtual machine and its guest operating system have changed since the time it was taken. It is not recommended to run production virtual machines off of snapshots on a permanent basis. When you do this anyway, you can get these "hard to remove snapshots"

Try to restore them from backup if you have one and then try to consolidate the snapshots. If you do not have a backup there is not much left you can do.

Try resolving the blue screen on the OS-level, is that doesn't work out for you, rebuild the machine.