Hi
Thank you for your answers
I tried to remove .lck but there was no such file
Removing following files: .vmsd, .nvram had no effect on this error
Solution : Commenting out the checkpoint.vmstate in the .vmx file did the trick as suggested by WoodyZ:s post
The options were still grayed out ,except for 'Power On to BIOS' (this one was previoulsy grayed) , but not anymore after removing checkpoint.vmstate .
All I did was comment this line out and restart vmware
Thank you !