GlenelgRiver wrote: By the way, I do have the iMac backing up/cloning every day and I see that it has copies of Virtual Machines Windows 7 x64 s001.vmdk files. I think it is up to about s075 now. Is there any way I can use these files to solve the problem, and if so, how do I achieve this? Many thanks.
Those file you mentions are extents of the whole virtual hard disk and normally are not treated individually since it is dependent on all of the necessary files that comprise the Virtual Machine and without out explicit and specific information to analyze, like with what the Collect Support Information command does in VMware Fusion then I can't advise explicitly and specifically and if you are backing up using Time Machine then read the following...
It is a known fact that Time Machine is not 100% reliable backing up/restoring Virtual Machines under all circumstances/conditions. Also backing up Virtual Machines via Time Machine is disk/time intensive and wastes a tremendous amount of space for something that may be corrupt and worthless come time to restore it. At a minimum I would exclude Virtual Machines from Time Machine and with the Virtual Machines shutdown, not suspended, and VMware Fusion closed then manually copy the Virtual Machines Package(s) to an alternate location, preferably on to a different physical hard disk. Then keep the User Data that is stored within the Virtual Machine backed up off of the Virtual Machine on a regular basis so as to always have a current User Data Backup. If you have to restore a properly backed up Virtual Machine that is not as current at least you'll have a working Virtual Machine and current User Data to go forward with when you find out your Time Machine Backup of the Virtual Machine fails.
That said, there are ways to get the User Data off of the existing Virtual Machine and use it in either a working backup copy of the Virtual Machine or a new one with the software reinstalled. If you live in the US and want to send me your phone number via Private Message I can more easily tell you what your options are then having to outline everything in a written reply as I just don't have the time at the moment to do it otherwise.