Cannot install VMWare tools

[SoloIT]

I'm trying to do some testing, so I did a P2V converstion of a Windows 2003 SBS server into ESXi 4. Went fine. Boot up the VM, all looked good, but I cannot install VMware tools. I get an Error 1325. From reading on this site, it appears it's having a problem writing/reading to My Documents. Well, it makes since since this is the AD and folders (including My Docs) are redirected to this machine, but since VM Tools won't intall, the machine does not have a network card, so I cannot see My Docs. I'm stuck in the loop. No network, no VMTools. I've tried to manually configure the Base System and network card as they show up in device manager, but I cannot find the drivers for them.

Any guidance is greatly appreciated.

[weinstein5]

Welcome to the Forums - your should be able to use the drivers for an AMD PCNET 32 bit NIC - that will allow you to recognize and use the virtual NIC -

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[SoloIT]

Could you elaborate? The decive is there, but Windows shows it as not working. Where are the drivers to try to reinstall it?

[weinstein5]

Without VMware tools the virtual NICs will be recognized as the AMD PCNET physical NIC and can use the corresponding physical driver - have you tried removing the NIC from the o/s and letting the plug and play recognize the virtual NIC -

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[SoloIT]

I tried removing it, but that did not work.

After further searching, I discovered if I removed it from VM and installed a new on using the e1000 driver it works. Not sure why "flexible" was having so many problems. There may be a performance hit, but this is a small test environment, so it won't really matter.

[danf201110141]

I just ran across this problem myself.

I P2V'd a live Windows 2003 Server running AD. The conversion went fine.

However, we use redirected documents folders and of course I didn't set an exclusion (or just deny apply privileges) for administrator accounts.

I removed the NICs for the VM, added a new Intel e1000e compatible nic, burned the Intel Pro/1000 driver to CD and used that to install the Intel drivers manually. After that the network came up and I was able to install the VMware tools package.

It'd be easier if they just allowed you to download the driver packs separately so we didn't run across an issue like this one. Although I found a workaround, it did take a lot of trial and error.