<p>If you have noticed that free disk space on your virtual machine dropped under 1GB you should check if the <strong>vminst.log</strong> is the culprit. Vminst.log contains a log from VMware tools installation or upgrades.</p>
<p>Vminst.log is located in the <strong>C:\Windows\Temp</strong> folder and could become huge over time. As you can see from the image below, in this case the size of the <strong>vminst.log</strong> was <strong>36GB</strong>!</p>
<p><img class="alignnone wp-image-3847 size-full" title="Cannot delete vminst.log on a virtual machine" src="https://www.wincert.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/vminstlog.png" alt="Cannot delete vminst.log on a virtual machine" width="447" height="52" /></p>
<p>Once I have tried to delete the file I have received a warning message that <strong>This action can&#8217;t be completed because the file is open in another program. Close the file and try again</strong>.</p>
<p><img class="alignnone wp-image-3848 size-full" title="Cannot delete vminst.log on a virtual machine" src="https://www.wincert.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/vminstlog3.png" alt="Cannot delete vminst.log on a virtual machine" width="452" height="210" /></p>
<p>As we <strong>cannot delete vminst.log on a virtual machine</strong> we have to stop the VMware tools installation.</p>
<p>Navigate to this virtual machine using <strong>VMware console</strong> and <strong>right-click</strong> on it. Then select <strong>Guest >; End VMware Tools Install</strong></p>
<p><img class="alignnone wp-image-3849 size-full" title="Cannot delete vminst.log on a virtual machine" src="https://www.wincert.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/vminstlog4.png" alt="Cannot delete vminst.log on a virtual machine" width="530" height="127" /></p>
<p>Reboot the virtual machine and connect to it using Console or RDP connection. After you log in to the server please wait for the removal process to finish and the server will reboot again automatically. Otherwise, reboot it again manually.</p>
<p>Now log-in again and you should be able to delete the vminst.log file and thus free-up valuable disk space on the system partition.</p>
<p>Comments are welcome.</p>

Cannot delete vminst.log on a virtual machine
