VMWare - UTF-8 Encoding Error

Today I had to import a VM we received into our ESX environment to do some data scrubbing. They gave me a raw VM instead of a nice OVF I could import, but it was small so I ran it through the VMWare Converter to get it into ESX. After the process was complete and I started up the VM, I got the following error message:



Not the most fun thing in the world at this point. I figured that since this VM likely passed through a couple different systems before making it to its final resting place in my ESX Environment, something went wrong along the way. Digging around the internets I found this post that discusses this error and how you can quickly correct it by doing a quick edit to the VMX file of the VM: Linkage.

I edited out the line in my VMX file that John mentions in his post and my VM fired up just fine. Good quick fix which I must say I am a fan of.