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GaryPP
Contributor
Contributor

Disconnected - A certificate error occurred while connecting to the update server. Check your Internet settings or contact your system administrator.

Hi,

I have VMWare Workstation Player 12.5.6 installed.  When I go into the Software Updates window and click on Check for Updates, I get the error

"Disconnected - A certificate error occurred while connecting to the update server. Check your Internet settings or contact your system administrator."

Now, I'm pretty sure I know what the problem is, but don't know how to solve it.

The Proxy we have here is a MITM proxy which the company use to scan all HTTP and HTTPS traffic.  To do this, the company's root cert is installed on the PC, and the Proxy will generate a new SSL cert for (almost) all https connections.  The browser is happy to accept this as it's correctly signed with a valid root cert.

However, the cert is not the original cert, as issued by the web site.  And it appears that the Software Update is either

- validating the cert is the correct cert, not just a valid cert

or

- not using the installed root certs to validate the cert, thus getting a cert that is not correctly signed.

For most things, the installation of the new root cert fixes it (installation into Windows or Linux, for example).

So how can I get around this in VMWare Workstation Player?  Can I install a root cert somewhere in the app path?  Or is there an option somewhere I haven't found?

For now, I have to manually check and download a new version.  It would be nice to have the Player tell me what it's available.

This also prevents the download and installation of VMWare Tools.

Thanks.

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GaryPP
Contributor
Contributor

Has anyone got any suggestions?

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parmarr
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

GaryPP my understanding is the certificate is valid for a year you may have to uninstall and reinstall the certificate. You may have to contact support to help you with it.

Sincerely, Rahul Parmar VMware Support Moderator
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GaryPP
Contributor
Contributor

The cert would be coming from the servers when an SSL or TCPS connection is being established - in this case, it's likely a https connection.  This cert would be valid, I'm sure.  At most, the public part of the cert would be installed along with Workstation Player, and this would be fairly up to date as I manually keep the app up to date.

The issue is that the proxy sees the cert that is part of the https connection and it replaces it with a cert of its own.  This, then, won't match the public key in the app, so the update fails.

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