You have to force the server to update it's policies by issuing the SECEDIT (windows 2000) command or gpupdate (Windows 2003/XP).

I am trying to use this method to upgrade the VMware tools on our existing servers. I can't get it to run without an error about another version already installed. I tried calling out the transforms they have in there but no luck there either. It leaves me to believe that the logic for the upgrade may be in the setup.exe. Has anyone else had any luck with this?

Thanks,
Randy

I finally edited the msi with Wise and specified that this package would upgrade the previous package (had to give it a new product code). I first published the msi to an administrative install share, got that from another post:
http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?threadID=13440&start=15&tstart=0

For the driver signing in W2K3, I created a .inf that sets the local security and import it with secedit.

Contents of the .inf to disable the unsigned driver warning:

[Unicode]
Unicode=yes
[Version]
signature="$CHICAGO$"
Revision=1
[Registry Values]
MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Driver Signing\Policy=3,0

To reset it back to default:
[Unicode]
Unicode=yes
[Version]
signature="$CHICAGO$"
Revision=1
[Registry Values]
MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Driver Signing\Policy=3,1

Now that these steps all work individualy, I'm going to wrap it all up in a vb script. I'll post the whole thing when I'm done.

Randy

Anyone know how to keep VMTools from asking about turning on Hardware acceleration?

No need for scripting...

If your VM's are part of W2K/3 AD you can do a VM installation/upgrade via Software Policies....

Note:
• In this example AD was running in Windows 2003 – but I’m sure these settings would work in Window 2000 AD
• I realized that an administrative installation would be required after reading a MS document on System Management 2.0 which stated:

” When you use SMS 2.0 to distribute a Windows Installer setup package, you must first set up the package source directory using Windows Installer's administrative installation. An administrative installation installs a source image of the application that is similar to a source image on a CD-ROM, but that can be installed directly from a network location. An administrative installation also prepares an application so that it can be run directly from the network location.

You perform an administrative installation by using the Windows Installer /a command-line option.

MSIEXEC /a setup.msi

An administrative installation performs all actions (such as expanding compressed files) that are required to either install or run the package directly from the network location. The package author determines the exact operations to be performed for a package during an administrative installation.”

• Overview of Procedure
o Copy VMware Tools to a File Server
o Create an Administrative Installation of VMware Tools
o Create an OU for all the VM’s, Create a GPO that weaken the Driver Signing Security and Computer Software policy to allow the installation to occur

1. Create an Administrative Install of VMware Tools
2. Open a command prompt and change into the directory where you copied the install of VMware Tools
3. Type, msiexec /a "VMware Tools.msi"
4. Choose Next

Note:
Notice how the dialog box states “The installation will create a server image of VMware Tools at a specified network location”

5. Type a path to where you want your admin installation to be created such as C:\VMare-Tools-W2K and click the Install button
6. Click Finish
7. Share out the directory created, in my case C:\VMware-Tools-W2K

8. Weakening the Driver Signing Security using a AD Policy

Note:
These instructions come from MS KB article Q298503.

9. In Active Directory Users & Computers
10. Create an OU which contains all your VM’s
11. Move all you computer accounts for those VM’s to the New OU
12. Right-click the OU, Select the Group Policy Tab
13. Click New, and type in a name such as VMware Tools Software Policy
14. Expand + Computer Configuration, Windows Settings, Security Settings, Security Options
15. Locate the policy called:

Device: Unsigned Driver Installation Behavior
Choose X Silently Succeed

16. Choose OK and Close all Windows

17. Creating a Computer Software Installation Policy
18. Expand + Computer Configuration, Software Settings
19. Right-click Software Installation
20. Choose New, and Package
21. Browse to your file server, and select the MSI File, in my case \\fileserver1\VMware-Tools-W2K\VMware Tools.msi
22. Choose © Assigned

Note:
If you have Virtual center, like me, you can schedule a reboot which should force it to refresh the policy and install the VMware Tools.
The VM will automatically reboot itself as is required in the new version of VMware Tools 3.0

For a easier to read version of the above. Read my beyond the manual guide online

Beyond the Manual Guide

pg 82

We struggled with this for a long time, but we finally found a way to make it work. We could manually upgrade the tools with no problem, but trying to automate it was a complete nightmare.

Basically, the problem turned out to be that trying to use msiexec to do an automated upgrade is effectively impossible. There is no combination of options that will reliably work in every case depending on the OS version and/or the existing tools version. (Since we had never been able to automate an upgrade, our environment had pretty much every build of the tools going all the way back to 2.0.0 and it was a complete mess.)

The solution that we eventually found was to give up on msiexec and use setup.exe instead. The command was:

setup.exe /s /v"/qn REBOOT=Force"

The only caveat to be aware of is that if you're scripting the process, that command will execute, spawn the upgrade process, and then immediately terminate. Hence, your script or batch file or whatever will think that the command has finished even though the upgrade has just started to run in the background. We normally supress all reboots in our packages and then decide when to boot via the script, but in this case that was not possible. We just had to add the reboot=force option to the install command and script around the fact that the command would finish executing instantly and then reboot at some later point after the upgrade was finished.

Using that method, we successfully upgraded about 70 machines running all different service packs of Windows 2000/2003 and probably six different older builds of the tools. After living in absolute misery for so long trying to do it with msiexec, we were stunned and surprised by how perfectly it worked.

When we're installing the tools from scratch on a new machine, though, we use msiexec because it doesn't have the "terminates instantly" problem that you get with setup.exe and is therefore easier to deal with in a script. That command is:

msiexec.exe /i "VMware Tools.msi" /qb ADDLOCAL=ALL REBOOT=ReallySuppress

Notice that in that case, the reboot is supressed so that we can handle it via our software deployment tool instead.

After some messing around I FINALLY figured out how to bypass the Hardware Acceleration check (for Windows 2003) during the install. What you need to do is create a transform that removes the following lines from the InstallExecuteSequence in the MSI.

VM_CheckHWAcceleration
VM_CheckHWAcceleration_SetData

If you want the file let me know.