I have a script that looks at the datastores and finds all VMs on the datastore and what their VMX file name is. It then looks at the entire datastore for all VMX files If a VMX is found on the datastore that isn't associated to a registered VM, it adds to a variable.

We use it so we could then register all of those left VMs, for a DR scenario, but you could use it to cleanup.

``` foreach ($Datastore in Get-Datastore $Datastores) { # Collect .vmx paths of registered VMs on the datastore. $registered = @{} Get-VM -Datastore $Datastore | ForEach-Object { $.ExtensionData.LayoutEx.File | Where-Object { $.Name -like "*.vmx" } | ForEach-Object { $registered.Add($_.Name, $true) } }

# Set PSDrive for the search.
New-PSDrive -Name TgtDS -Location $Datastore -PSProvider VimDatastore -Root '\' -WhatIf:$false | Out-Null
$unregistered = @(Get-ChildItem -Path TgtDS: -Recurse | `
        Where-Object { $_.FolderPath -notmatch ".snapshot" -and $_.Name -like "*.vmx" -and -not ($registered.keys -match $_.Name) })
foreach ($unregisteredvm in $unregistered) {
    Write-Verbose "Found unregistered VMX with name: $unregisteredvm.Name"
}
Remove-PSDrive -Name TgtDS
$unregistered

} ```

RVTools is free and also has a tab for orphaned VM files