VMware “unable to access a file since it is locked”

Ran into an unusual problem with my VMware farm, when trying to power on a system I get the error “Unable to access a file since it is locked”.

A quick look on the web brings up http://www.techhead.co.uk/vmware-esx-unable-to-access-a-file-since-it-is-locked
The first two options are somewhat expected (the file is locked by something else). In my case the third option resolved the issue for me, I recreated the VMX and everything is good.