VMWare Virtual Machines on NTFS

I keep having a problem with my virtual machines. I’m running kubuntu but the virtual machines are on an NTFS partition (because I use them from windows occasionally). The error message appears at startup and goes like this:


VMware Player unrecoverable error: (vcpu-0)
Failed to allocate page for guest RAM!
A log file is available in "/path/to/VM/vmware.log". A core file is available in "/path/to/VM/core". Please request support and include the contents of the log file and core file.
To collect data to submit to VMware support, run "vm-support".
We will respond on the basis of your support entitlement.

I looked in the log file and saw that immediately before the “Failed to allocate page” bit it said:


Could not mmap paging file : No such device

Apparently this is a known problem with VMs on an NTFS parition, but luckily the solution is very simple. I found a post which recommended editing the .vmx file and adding the following line:


mainMem.useNamedFile=FALSE

This worked perfectly for me, I hope it helps someone else too. See also my post about installing vmware tools

8 thoughts on “VMWare Virtual Machines on NTFS

  1. Linux user from Canada here. I ran into the same problem, and your post came up in a Google search. In my case, the problem was my VMs are in an HPFS partition so I can share them with VMWare Player for Windows. It looks like Linux doesn’t like mmap’ping from HPFS partitions, because VMware player for Linux works just fine without mainMem.useNamedFile=FALSE if the VMs are on an ext2 partition.

  2. THANK YOU!!!

    had similar issue – Linux with external USB drive formatted for NTFS.

    works with your note!

  3. Linux User, Random Surfer, mark: Thanks to all of your for dropping by and letting me know it worked for you and the additional information – glad it helped :)

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