Fix for error message : Call “PropertyCollector.RetrieveContents” for object “propertyCollector” on vCenter Server “vCenter Hostname” failed.

Posted on by Paul McSharry

I recently came across this error while trying to amend the settings of a template. 

I converted the template to a guest virtual machine, and found the settings were greyed out, while the below error message was displayed.

This appeared to affect all templates created before a recent  vSphere 4.0 – 4.1 upgrade.

Fix:

  1. Ensure the guest virtual machine is powered off
  2. Note the datastore location of the guest machine
  3. Right click on the guest machine and click "Remove from inventory"
  4. Navigate to the datastore noted in step 2
  5. Right click on the guest virtual machine config file (.vmx) and click "Add to inventory"