VMWare error: Check for missing files failed: Insufficient permission to access file.

Recently I was making changes to one of my vmware vm and made a typo, heh, like that never happens.  Anyway, long story short, I had to recover from backup and when I tried to start up the VM, I was getting the following error:

Check for missing files failed: Insufficient permission to access file.

This is on one of my laptops, this one happen to be running Vista and VMWare Workstation 6.  Googling find that other people run into similar problems.  There were various suggestion about ACL, and disabling UAC, etc.

I’ve went through all the various checks, to no use.  Even after I login as Administrator…. hmmm…. WTF!

It turned out to be very simple issue (for me).  When I restored from backup (I dumped all backup to a NAS w/lots of storage), using rsync, I had not realize that the backup had readonly permission (UNIX 0444).  The culprit was myvmname.vmx, myvnmname.vmdk, etc.  After I removed the Readonly flag, all was happy.