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TN3
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Fusion 13.0.1 - Can't update or reinstall VMWare Tools on WinXP VM

I upgraded from Fusion Player 12 to 13 and now I can't update VMWare Tools on any of my Win XP machines. The "Update VMWare Tools" menu goes gray and never finishes. I tried removing VMWare Tools (10.0.12): the menu changes to "Install VMWare Tools" but likewise goes gray and never finishes. I tried the manual installation technique: there is a D drive with VMware Tools and the setup.exe file on it, but running it produces "not a valid win32 application." The OS is 32-bit Windows XP Professional. I tried this on both Mac OS 12 Big Sur and OS 13 Ventura with identical results.

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Technogeezer
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Unless you have a good reason. don't upgrade Tools in a working XP VM. The tools for XP haven't been updated in years, and the latest versions aren't supported (and likely won't install) on XP. VMware Tools version 10.0.12 was the last version to support XP.

Take a snapshot of that virtual machine and/or back it up before doing anything further. 

This isn't Fusion specific. Search the web for "upgrade vmware tools Windows XP" for example and you'll find lots of discussion. 

One hit might be of interest: the following KB article, for example: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1001354

 

- Paul (Technogeezer)
Editor of the Unofficial Fusion Companion Guides