The Session Is Not Authenticated

For the intent of this post I am speaking about the standalone converter only.  For those running ESX and Virtual center there is a way to convert the image using VMotion.  I will not be covering this here today.

When attempting to convert a VM you may run into trouble if the unsuspecting party that asked you to convert it did not copy the Guest OS or shut down the Guest OS properly.  During the convertion process you will see “the session is not authenticated.” and will be unable to continue.

Simply put, exit the standalone converter and open your services (Start>Run and then type in services.msc and press enter.)

Locate following services and stop them in this order:
VMWare vCenter Converter Server
VMWare vCenter Converter Agent

Now start the services in this order:
VMWare vCenter Converter Server
VMWare vCenter Converter Agent

Start the vCenter Converter again and start the convertion process.  Viola!  All should be well once again. 

2 Comments


  1. I ran into this error the other evening, the strange thing about this is, I was able to P2V other machines, I only ran into it with that one machine and I didnt restart any services to resolve the issue.

    The other strange thing that came from this was, even though it errored on the P2V. It eventually showed up as a conversion in the VIC. Im not sure what exactly happened. Have you ever come across anything like this before?


  2. I have seen this before, however typically when I’ve seen this it was not with the Stand Alone Converter doing P2V (Physical to Virtual) [side note if you didn’t know that stop what you’re doing and call for help!].

    What you are saying though is that your Virtual instance did eventually come back up after you encountered this error or no?

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