Hey, thanks for this elaborate answer. Much appreciated!
I did check a couple of things. Looks like the original VMX file is just empty. There is nothing in it.
I checked other Virtual Machines and they all have VMX files with all sorts of configuration data in them.
About your other remark not to start up the VM. When we rebuild the VM and attached the Virtual Disks we discovered (after startup) that it contained old data. The rest is most likely in the snapshots.
Does this mean we are "screwed" ???