How to fix orphaned virtual machine

If one of your virtual machines become orphaned do the following to get it online.

1. Launch Virtual Center or Virtual Client
2. Right click on the orphaned virtual machine
3. Select ‘Remove from Inventory’
4. Now select the host that you would like the VM to reside on
5. Then click on the Configuration Tab
6. Under the Hardware Pane located on the left, click on Storage
7. You should see on the right all the Datastores
8. Now double click on the Datastore where the Virtual Machine VMX file resides, this will launch the ‘Datastore Browser’
9. Now locate the VMX file.
10. Right click on the file and choose ‘Add to Inventory’
11. Go through the wizard and your Virtual Machine should appear online again.