vmware tools won't upgrade

[segelhof]

I am unable to upgrade the vmware tools on a windows 2003 virtual machine. I've tried doing it manually by doubleclicking it form the try and clicking update tools but it doesn't do anything. I've also tried doing it through the vsphere client, it just says 'In Progress' but never does anything nor does anything pop up on the console. Finally, I tried setting it to auto upgrade in the advanced settings of the VM but it doesn't appear to do anything either.

The only thing I see in the windows event log from the VMUpgradeHelper are three events.

1. Restoring network ocnfiguration.

2. The VmUpgradeHelper service has started.

3. Not restoring network configuration for adapter with MAC address XX:XX,etc. The device ID for this adapter is unchanged.

Any ideas? Where are the files themselves so I can just do it manually? I don't see the tools ever mount as a drive in windows explorer.

[Troy_Clavell]

dumb question... The guest has a CD/DVD drive, correct?  Also, there is nothing mounted to it? The tools come from the ESXi Host

[segelhof]

Yes it has a cd\dvd when I go into edit settings.

In Windows it shows a CD drive AND a DVD drive (neither has anything loaded in it)

This appears to be happening to all the virtual machines on this host. This host was an ESX (not i) 4.1 host I upgraded to ESXi 5.0.

[Troy_Clavell]

check your ESXI5 host, you should see a directory \vmimages\tools-isoimages

In there should be all the ISO files for the VMware tools. If that directory does not exist, and you have another ESXi Host, you can copy them from another host.

[segelhof]

Thanks yes the file existed there. I just copied it to another datastore and mounted that in a virtual cdrom and was able to upgrade it. I went ahead and opened a tech support request to see if we can get it working the other way as this will take much longer manually.

Thanks for your help