"VMWare Tools can be updated" yellow exclamation mark?

[DSperber]

Real newbie here, so please be gentle.

Originally installed VMWare Workstation Player 15.0.4 running on Win10 a few weeks back, and then created Win7 VM guest, and installed VMWare Tools 10.3.5 in the Win7 VM.  All was fine.

Today I accepted the offer to upgrade VMWare to 15.1.0, and that went fine.

But now when I play the Win7 VM the system tray icon for VMTools has a yellow exclamation mark on it.  When I hover the mouse over it the message "VMWare Tools can be updated" is the flyout. But I thought the latest version of VMWare Tools was 10.3.5.  I certainly wasn't offered an option to upgrade VMWare Tools to a newer version, assuming there might be a newer version that matches 15.1.0 of VMWare itself.  I have no idea what the story it.

I have tried uninstalling VMWare Tools, re-starting Win7 VM, and then reinstalling the same 10.3.5 version. And not surprisingly the yellow exclamation mark is still there.

I have to admit, I have a great deal of difficulty navigating through the VMWare web site. I do not find it user-friendly.  Quite the opposite, to be honest, but maybe I'm just a beginner.  I cannot figure out how to find anything, or search for something, or how to even download the latest version of VMWare tools. Even trying to search this forum was non-intuitive, and I didn't find any "hits" that might have been helpful.  To be honest I can't even remember how I got the 10.3.5 download file in the first place but I certainly can't find it now, a few weeks later.

Can somebody please help me. Is this yellow exclamation mark normal or an indication of something I must do? And if I must do something, what is that?  And please provide me with URL links to whatever page I need to go to to get started, or whatever I need to download.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Note that my Win7 VM is working perfectly, so that's not something I'm asking for assistance with. I only want to address the "VMWare Tools can be updated" message and yellow exclamation mark.

Thanks in advance.

[DSperber]

Is it really possible that out of 49 subscribers on the VMWare Workstation Player sub-forum who have looked at my question, that absolutely nobody knows how to "update VMWare Tools"?

Is this message legitimate?  Is it because I just updated Workstation Player to 15.1.0 and need a similar update to VMWare tools (newer than 10.3.5, which I thought was the latest version as of a few weeks ago)? If so, where do I find that update?  How do I get it, or trigger it to happen automatically, or what?

The yellow exclamation mark doesn't seem to impact any operational functionality, but it screams for me to do something. And I would be glad to do it, whatever "it" means, if only I knew how.

Is there not one "expert" who knows what I should do here to resolve this issue?

Thanks again in advance, for any help you can provide.

[DSperber]

Here is the VMWare Tools icon in the system tray. Hovering the mouse over it produces a flyout text that says "VMWare Tools can be updated".

Also, the only "menu" I can find is in the upper-left corner, i.e. the Player menu dropdown. There is a "Manage" item with a right-arrow on that dropdown menu, and clicking on that right-arrow presents a flyout sub-menu that shows "update VMWare tools" at the top... except that it is grayed out!!! So it cannot be selected. This suggests there really isn't any appropriate new version of VMWare Tools to upgrade to, or maybe something is wrong in my setup.

So I ask again for help. Assuming the yellow exclamation mark over the VMWare Tools icon in the system tray is legitimate, what is it asking me to do? Why is it displayed? And then why is the "Upgrade VMWare tools" menu item grayed out and unavailable for selection?

Doesn't anybody know what this is all about? Either I've done something wrong, or there is some update to VMWare Tools that I need to apply except that I can't find it for download and the presumed automatic menu item which claims "update VMWare Tools" is grayed out and inoperative, suggesting that there is NOT an update pending.

Anybody know what is going on here?

[DSperber · Accepted solution]

Ok. Solved it.

Turns out there IS a newer version of VMWare Tools than 10.3.5, namely 10.3.10. So the yellow exclamation mark was genuinely justified in alerting me to the need to update my currently installed 10.3.5.

With that new knowledge now at hand there are still two issues to be addressed:

(a) where does one find the appropriate downloadable installation file for VMWare Tools 10.3.10, be it EXE or ISO?

(b) how does one install the new 10.3.10 (or any version, for that matter) of VMWare Tools?

For anybody else who might ever be asking these same questions in the future, here is the roadmap to victory.

(1) Log into your My VMWare account home page using your userid/password for your VMWare account (which was created even if you are only using free products as I am, in order to do the download).

(2) On the right side of the home page there is a short list of "quick links", the second of which is "All Downloads". Click on this All Downloads link to get the page providing download links for all VMWare products grouped into categories. NOTE: if you think you will find the download link to VMWare Tools here in this "All Downloades" list, you're sadly mistaken.  You will have to drill down much deeper to find it.

(3) When you land on the All Downloads page, down almost at the bottom of the page is a category named "Deskop and End-user Computing". Down toward the bottom of that category is a line item for "VMWare Workstation Player", with a URL link off to the right that says "View Download Components". Click on this View Download Components link to get the page providing download links for VMWare Workstation Player for Windows​ as an EXE installer file, the latest version at this time being 15.1.0.  NOTE: if you think you will find the download link to VMWare Tools here along with the download link to Workstation Player, you're agaom sadly mistaken. You will have to drill down yet another path to find it.

(4) What I didn't know but finally figured out, it turns out that VMWare Tools is distributed as part of the "VMWare vSphere" product!!! Why nobody ever told me that before, I don't know. But that's where it is buried!  You'd think there might be a "quick link" to VMWare Tools on your home page, or maybe on the All Downloads page, or maybe even on the Workstation Player page.  But no.  It is instead distributed as part of "VMWare vSPhere"... and you'd better know that if you ever want to find its download link.

So back to the All Downloads page, up at the top the first category of software products for download is titled is "Datacenter & Cloud Infrastructure".  And a few items down in the list of items for this category is a line item titled "VMWare vSphere". On the right side of the VMWare vSphere line item there is a URL link for "View Download Components | Drivers & Tools | Try | Get Training", each of which is its own separate link. Click on the "Drivers & Tools" link to get a page titled "Download VMware vSphere".  This is the "front door" to downloading VMWare Tools.

(5) Down a bit on the Download VMWare vSphere page is an item named "VMWare Tools", preceded by a right-arrow control. Click on that right-arrow to change it into a down-arrow which expands the line item to show all available versions of VMWare Tools that you can download beginning with the most recent. On the first line is the latest version (10.3.10 in this case), and off on the right side of the line is a URL link for "Go to downloads".

Click on that Go to downloads link to get a page titled "Download Product", which finally contains the actual URL download link which will allow you to get VMWare Tools. We're getting very close now.

(6) On the "Download Product" page , below the general descriptive text at the top, there is a "Product downloads" tab, with a list below it of various versions of VMWare Tools ZIP or TAR.GZ files suitable for various environments. I clicked on the "Download now" URL link on the right side of the line providing the installer ZIP file for Windows and Linux, which finally finally finally launches the download/save dialog for the ZIP file for VMWare Tools for Windows, latest version (currently 10.3.10).

Took a while to get here, but we finally have the ZIP file for installing the latest version of VMWare Tools for Windows.

So now that the first objective has been conquered, it's on to the second issue, namely how to install the version of VMWare Tools for Windows whose ZIP file I now have downloaded.

(7) Unzipping the downloaded ZIP file produces a folder with two sub-folders (named "floppies" and "vmtools"). And looking inside the "vmtools" sub-folder, sure enough there is among all the various files contained there a file named "WINDOWS.ISO"... which surely must be what I have been looking for.  There is no SETUP.EXE or other named EXE file.  I don't know how I found an EXE file to install VMWare Tools. 10.3.5, but apparently the official proper installation method is to use this WINDOWS.ISO, "mounting it" on the virtual CD/DVD drive inside Win7 VM.

(8) Now I go into my Win7 VM, and go to Control Panel, to first uninstall the current VMWare Tools 10.3.5. This will trigger a re-boot of WinVM which will thus re-start Win7 VM without any VMWare Tools installed. That means temporarily there is not a proper SVGA graphics driver, so the desktop looks like "basic" mode, not Aero mode.  Don't be concerned.

Now go to the Player menu (upper-left corner of the Win7 VM window) and select Player -> Removable devices -> CD/DVD (SATA) -> Settings

to get the following window that allows conceptually "inserting" the ISO into the CD/DVD tray, in order to "mount the WINDOWS.ISO" containing all of the installation files for VMWare Tools:

I then checked the "use ISO image file" radio button, and also the "connected" device status box, navigated to the sub-folder where WINDOWS.ISO (for VMWare Tools) was unzipped to and selected that ISO file, and then finally pushed the OK button to trigger the "mounting/reading of the WINDOWS.ISO file" and beginning of the install wizard for VMWare Tools. I specified "custom" at the start of the installation sequence (just so that I could see what's happening) but otherwise I just left all options pre-checked in their default state, and let it proceed automatically until it completed.

After the VMWare Tools install completes a re-boot is again performed. And then when Win7 VM comes back up, sure enough I have now 10.3.10 VMWare Tools installed and there is NO yellow exclamation mark over the icon in the system tray.  SVGA graphics driver is back, so the Win7 VM desktop is once again Aero mode.

Furthermore, the Player -> Manage flyout sub-menu now shows "Reinstall VMWare tools" (grayed-out). I then went back to Removable Device -> Settings and checked "use physical drive" CD/DVD instead of "use ISO image file".

All is now well.  Case closed.