Service 'VMware CAF Management Agent Service' fails to start

[bbokle]

I was having an issue with MACOS Sierra with VMWARE tools 7.1.3 and I know it is unsupported so I did the trial to the newest fusion.  However, the machine is still booting the guest OS (Windows 10 Pro) into a black screen.  We see the Windows log and then a black screen.  I can get into safe mode no problem.  I disabled the VMware video drivers and I can now get into windows guest os.  However, I went to install the VMware tools hoping this will solve the issue, and I can't complete the install.  I am getting Service 'VMware CAF Management Agent Service' (VMwareCAFManagementAgentHost) failed to start. Error 1053, failed to start in a timely manner.  I have tried switching the user the service uses to startup the service to no availability.  I can't get the tools installed without it, which will most likely fix my issue.

Any help is much appreciated.

Thanks, Bob

[bbokle]

So the OS was updated today to version 1703 and that is when things got goofy.  I rolled back and the VMware tools seemed to be broken.  I went to reinstall VMware tools and it won't start the service Vmware CAF Management Agent Service.  I am at a loss as to what to do at this point.

[bbokle]

Any VMware employees out there?

[bbokle]

Reset Windows was my last resort, it fixed the issue.

[victort13]

When you say "Reset' Windows...Do you mean uninstalled the Windows 10 Creator 1703 update or deleted your Windows 10 installation and reinstalled?

[marcello76]

ciao,

same problem here.

windows 10 vm, upgraded to 1703, when trying to install wmware tools 10.1.7 i obtain the same error.

if i try to start the service manually, via services msc, i receive error that service did not start.

I've also increase the timeout to 60 sec but nothing.

tried version 10.1.5 ... same results.

the only option is to click cancel and the setup rollback all changes removing the service and, of curse, the vmware tools also.

i've tryed with sysinternals procmon to see if something goes wrong but I did not find anything useful.

is there some log file that can be read to see what is going wrong ?

please any help will be appreciated

thanks a lot

regards

marcello

[marcello76]

Hi all,

Solved for me.

I've deleted the CAF folder inside c:\programdata\vmware.

For some reason it contains configuration files corrupted and unreadable.

Reinstall VMware tools 10.1.7 and all goes fine.

Service started and setup finished.

I hope this could be useful for other

Ciao

Marcello

[mkorayem]

It worked for me very well

Thanks

[DineshMahesh696]

Please follow the KB Fix: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/54459