Error 1327 Invalid Drive M: when installing VMWare Tools

[MWunder]

Ok,

Had RC1 installed and had the "My Documents" shared on my OSX so that I had a centrally located folder for both OS's. Worked fine.

Per the instructions on the website that after installing the released Fusion to uninstall VMWare tools and then reinstall. I did this by uninstalling through WinXP Add/Remove and then rebooted. XP said it found some new hardware, but I hit cancel. Now when I try to install the tools I get the above error and it aborts. I have disconnected the network bridge, removed references to the shared folder in settings, etc. I still get this error and tools will not install.

I had a mapped drive pointing to the M: drive and disconnected that. The only other thing that points to M: is the My Documents folder which I moved to the shared location.

I did call tech support and they said someone would get back with me via email within a day. I would like to try and resolve sooner.

Any suggestions? Boot in safe mode perhaps? That is how I got AutoCad 2004Lt to finish the registration process.

Thanks,

Mike

[Harliv]

Where during the install are you getting this failure?

[MWunder]

Right in the beginning. Goes through the typical windows progress bar, then comes up with the VMWare tools installer and then gives me the error. Obviously has something to do with the M drive being shared originally, but I deleted that share in the settings portion of the VM thinking that was it.

The only thing left for me to do is move the "My Documents" folder away from the M: drive.

It is frustrating since I followed the instructions to a 'T'.

[marcusaurelius]

Don't know why the Tools installer would want to touch the "My Documents" folder, but I'd be really interested to hear what happens when you remap the folder to the VM's C: drive.

FWIW, the Tools install/uninstall instructions have been written to the most-common use case. "Minor" variations like a user remapping "My Documents" to a VMware Shared Folder I'm sure didn't qualify as "most common" cases.

Message was edited by:

marcusaurelius

[MWunder]

Think I figured it out...

The only thing that I had not done was move the "My Documents" folder back to its default place. After doing that...tools installed.

I had to redo my mapping and such but no big deal.

The question I have is that why does the instructions state to unistall tools, reboot, and then reinstall. When I first booted with the public release and clicked on install tools, it asked if I wanted to upgrade them. Would this have been the better choice?

Thanks,

[Harliv]

Doing an upgrade would have probably been ok but there would not have been an advantage to going that route. Going from beta versions to a GA it is usually recommended to do an uninstall first and then a clean install of tools just to make sure everything is clean.

[Pat_Lee]

Doing an upgrade would have probably been ok but

there would not have been an advantage to going that

route. Going from beta versions to a GA it is usually

recommended to do an uninstall first and then a clean

install of tools just to make sure everything is

clean.

In this case, you need to follow the instructions to get to the same state at a VM created from scratch with 1.0. There is something that should not have been installed by tools by previous VMware Fusion betas that needed to be uninstalled first to remove them correctly.

Pat

[VTMac]

Hmmm... I just did the upgrade. What would be recommended method to get rid of the mysterious "something" that should not have been installed by RC1? Am I SOL at this point?

[marcusaurelius]

Uninstalling the old Tools then installing the new Tools ensures a clean new installation.

That's it -- uninstall the old Tools & install the new Tools.

[decker12]

I also had this problem, turns out I was remapping My Documents to my F: drive while I was hacking together a fix for Parallels Shared folders. Resetting my My Documents location back to my C: drive fixed the problem.

Message was edited by:

decker12

[Yoav]

I had the same problem.

Very unfriendly.

VMware should at least put an informative message, or (better) not assume My Documents folder at all.

[lerocha]

Hi folks,

I also had the same error 1327 when installing VMware Server. I had more folders that were mapped to a network drive: My Documents, My Pictures, My Music, My Video, etc.

In order to see all the mapped folders that are causing this error, check the following registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

I hope VMware fix this so that users who changed the location of Windows user folders are able to install it.

Cheers.

[blckgrffn]

Awesome, that was exactly the answer I needed!

Thanks,

Nat