Vmware Tools upgrade does not mount on Windows 2003 Guest VM

[r_engel]

Guys

I've been experiencing this issue for sometime now, and would like some input.

We are currently going through with upgrading our 3.0.2 update 1 ESX hosts to 3.0.3 and then to 3.5...

As we have upgraded some ESX hosts to 3.0.3 already, this requires the vmware tools to be upgraded on the Guests running on the 3.0.3 hosts..

Some of the Guests have no issues with VC -> right click properties on VM -> Upgrade/Install Vmware Tools.

Some guests have the media mounted as a CD drive and off we go.

However, some of my other guests won't display the Cd drive, I've tried to add it manually using disk manager in windows 2003, still no avail.

The Guests do not have any CD-ROM drives configured, only floppy & HDD.

Is there a way to manually install the package on the Guest? Or has anyone else experienced this issue? Do I need to configure a cd-rom first on the guest and then start the install/upgrade vmware tools process?

Also, I've noticed some guests that cannot log onto our active directory domain after the guest has been vmotioned to a host running 3.0.3 (with an older version of vmware tools, where it says 'out of date' under Vmware tools in Virtual Centre)... I've run the w32time net stop and start on the Guest which has resolved the issue with the VM not 'seeing' the domain..

Cheers

Cheers

[Rubeck]

Try to look in /vmimages/tools-isoimages/ on one of the hosts ....

Here should be a windows.iso which cotains the installation files you can run extract and run manually...

/Rubeck

[r_engel]

Thanks Rubeck - is this a known issue with ESX 3.0.3?

Some VM Windows 2003 servers mount the media without any issues, others just simply don't do it.

We are running Active Directory on our virtual environment, where Vmwaretools hasn't been upgraded yet (due to the fact that we are still running ESX 3.0.2 Update 1 hosts).

I'm conscious of 'time' issues with these servers, as we have experienced this problem with VM Guests recently having vmware tools upgraded and the time/clock was out of synch.

(which prevent domain logons), until w32 time was restarted the server had the incorrect time.. Strange.