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hanseric
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How do I uninstall VMWare TOOLS??

VMWare Tools is not working. I can't even get my guest OS (Windows XP Home) on the 'net whereas it was working perfectly previously for weeks and weeks. Then suddenly died.

But Fusion thinks it is still working I guess. When I try to Install VMWare Tools, it appears that my only option is to Cancel VMWare Tools Installation. Is it trying to install itself already? Or did I start that one of these times I tried to repair it and it got stuck installing?

How do I kill that process and restart it? Or better yet, how do I yank it out by the roots and reinstall VMWare Tools from the beginning?

Also, as a side note, this discussion forum's UI is kind of goofy. Every other forum on earth has "Start a Topic" right above the forum itself. Here it is at the top of the page with tons of non-forum links between "Start a topic" and the forum itself. Is this a forum page or a knowledge base home page? Looks like it is trying to be both and it adds time trying to hunt around finding a way to start a topic. Now I know, but I'd suggest changing that one. Maybe I'm the only one...kind of suspect not though. Might be worth investigating.

Cheers,

Hans

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WoodyZ
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You uninstall VMware Tools from Add or Remove Programs in Control Panel in Windows.

How hard is it to click the "Start a discussion" link under Actions? It is in the top left quadrant of the web page and seems normal and appropriate to me.

View solution in original post

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hanseric
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By the way on this: just restarted VMWare Fusion and tried reinstalling Tools and it says that all it can do is an Upgrade. When I go to do that, it says that I already have the latest version of VMWare Tools. Hey, that's really comforting. How do I get rid of it now so I can get a latest version that actually works? :_|

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WoodyZ
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You uninstall VMware Tools from Add or Remove Programs in Control Panel in Windows.

How hard is it to click the "Start a discussion" link under Actions? It is in the top left quadrant of the web page and seems normal and appropriate to me.

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hanseric
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Well I would expect you to say that after almost 12,000 posts in this forum. Smiley Wink (which is very cool, btw.)

Anyway, maybe I'm just low on coffee this morning. Was just giving some UI input from a newbie to the site but not a newbie to forums in general. Being completely out of commission for hours now from this VMWare tools thing (can't get on 'net) is not helping me to focus either.

Thanks for the hint on Add/Remove Programs. Worked but I'm still hosed on VMWare tools. When I removed it and reinstalled, it got to the end of install and said it had an error and had to report it to Microsoft, etc. Come to think of it, this happened the last time I repaired VMWare tools (can't seem to get the Repair dialogue to show up anymore--it's only Update now as an option).

Attaching some images in case they help anyone to help me.

You uninstall VMware Tools from Add or Remove Programs in Control Panel in Windows.

How hard is it to click the "Start a discussion" link under Actions? It is in the top left quadrant of the web page and seems normal and appropriate to me.

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admin
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What version of Fusion are you running?

Comments about the forums are probably better off in

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edoriv
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While booted into Windows I've tried over and over to remove the VMware tools using the add remove programs it fails every time.

I get the following messages

1. Preparing to uninstall...

2. Setup failed to determine which VMware product this virtual machine is running on. Click OK to cancel the installation.

I'm guessing this is due to the fact that I am booted direct into Windows and not through VMware? The problem is Windows fails to load using VMware it just hangs starting up.

How do I uninstall the tools if I can't boot using VMware?

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admin
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Unfortunately, Tools only (un)installs if running in a VMware product. I suppose you could try manually removing the components, though I don't know what they are.

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Nimai
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I may be in a similar boat. I am using a Mac with Boot Camp and VMWare Fusion. Windows Vista boots fine under Boot Camp, but under VMWare Fusion, Vista complains about modifications made to the system and needing to re-authenticate. I tried re-authenticating and it did not work, but booting the Mac directly into Windows continues to work.

Some information I have read elsewhere lead me to try to re-install the VMWare Tools. I can not log in to Windows through VMWare Fusion, so updating or re-installing the Tools through WMWare Fusion is not an option. I could not find anywhere online to download the Tools ISO image. I am also unable to uninstall VMWare Tools through Windows. I get the same message as the poster above: "Setup failed to determine which VMware product this virtual machine is running on. Click OK to cancel the installation."

Does anyone has any suggestions for things I might try to get the Tools re-installed given that I cannot log in to Windows through VMWare?

Thank you.

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alerque
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Please tell me you're joking! I am trying to get rid of VMware tools from a guest OS that I have converted to another virtual tool (VirtualBox) because VMware was too much of a pain to administer. Unfortunatly the tools refuse to uninstall.

Is there any way around this? I could understand not installing, but not uninstalling? Seriously!

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majordisaster
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Ok, it bothers me greatly that this issues says it has been "Answered" and yet several people since the intial posting have said that the "Accepted Solution" does not work; and nobody has addressed that issue.

More than one poster has stated that the "Add/Remove Programs" option of uninstalling VMWare tools does not work properly, and nobody has followed up to say whether that has been resolved in some manner - has some patch resolved this problem, so that it is no longer a problem? This topic was started over a year ago, yet does not appear to be resolved.

I am in a situation where I need to uninstall the existing VMWare tools and then install the latest, so I happened upon this topic, and now I am even 'less' comfortable about attempting to uninstall the tools.

Any help, tips, pointers and final resolution to the issues in this topic (inability to remove the tools via add/remove programs) would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

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eXtermia
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this is rather annoying that you can't remove them unless they are running under VMWARE. I can see not installing them. Anyone at VMWare willing to make a utility to force uninstall. I use VMWARE to develope my customer image to push through Ghost GSS 2.5. I too would like to be able clean up all the remnants out there without having to manually force remove services etc on 1500+ boxes.

I could remove them from the main VM but that also causes usability issues. Either that or code the uninstaller to still allow uninstall on non VM's even if it can't be installed.

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RichardNetherla
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If uninstall of vmtools fails you can find out below how to remove vmtools and other vmware software inside your vm.

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1001354 and here

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1308

and you can download removal tool here:

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/viewAttachment.do?attachID=VMware_Install_Cleaner.zip&documentID=13...

After you have removed previous tools new can be installed.

Why did it not take me more then 2 minutes to find these solutions?

Cheers!

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alerque
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Cheers to you too Sir, but please be careful about criticizing others unsolved problems. Neither of the solutions you present are relevant because they both involve machines still in an vmware environment. If you look through the docs for what you just sent and if you had lived through a similar situation you would understand that machines removed from a virtual environment into a hard one or transfered to another platform, you will discover that even those removal tools only function inside vmware.

I did not spend only two minutes on this, I spent closer to twenty hours over two days. I and several others still feel like we have a legitimate complaint against vmware because their tools application will not uninstall if the host machine is not a vmware product.

Thank you for taking a couple minutes to try to show us a solution. This problem is just a little stickier than that however.

A blessing on your bytes...

Caleb

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RichardNetherla
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Cheers to you too Sir, but please be careful about criticizing others unsolved problems. Neither of the solutions you present are relevant because they both involve machines still in an vmware environment. If you look through the docs for what you just sent and if you had lived through a similar situation you would understand that machines removed from a virtual environment into a hard one or transfered to another platform, you will discover that even those removal tools only function inside vmware.

I did not spend only two minutes on this, I spent closer to twenty hours over two days. I and several others still feel like we have a legitimate complaint against vmware because their tools application will not uninstall if the host machine is not a vmware product.

Thank you for taking a couple minutes to try to show us a solution. This problem is just a little stickier than that however.

A blessing on your bytes...

Caleb

Indeed it is mentioned that these method are for inside a vm, but if you tried you would find they also work outside a vm. The tool does, and manual removing services or editing the registry has nothing to do weather it is a vm or not. My suggestion is you try it.

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anystupidassnam
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With respect specifically to moving a machine from vmware workstation 6.5.x to another virtualization product or physical hardware.

"If uninstall of vmtools fails you can find out below how to remove vmtools and other vmware software inside your vm.

and here "

The first link is an incomplete manual removal procedure.

The second link is not relevant.

The first link and you can download removal tool here:

After you have removed previous tools new can be installed.

The tool is useless as far as I'm concerned. I didn't run procmon or anything to figure out what exactly it is supposed to do but, after I ran it twice before and after reboots, my guest still had:

12 Vmware services / apps

Several virtual devices

Surely other things I'm not even aware of and

EVEN the "add/remove programs" entries (let's face it, any doofus can remove those manually but why can't this tool do it for you?!?)

Why did it not take me more then 2 minutes to find these solutions?

We tried it > it didn't work > you're throwing an ID10T error...

Vmware obviously is not interested in facilitating the move away from Vmware which sort of makes business sense...

Cheers!

Cheers indeed...

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I_C
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i think you can uninstall the tools provided you have access to the vmtools installer. You can run "setup.exe /c" from a cmdprompt and it should remove them.

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alerque
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Thanks for trying I_C ... you are right the installer does have a /c uninstall flag that works if the installed uninstaller is busted, but it WILL NOT execute outside of a vmware client os environment. In spite of several posters here who suppose it does, quite of a few of us, including vmware documentation, confirm that it does not.

This is an issue if you convert a vmware machine to a different platform, such as VirtualBox like I did, and forget to uninstall the tools before you do the conversion.

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I_C
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Thats funny because it just worked for the 2008 VM i just moved to XenServer:

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mwheinz
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Did anyone ever find an answer to this? As others have noted, none of the listed procedures actually remove VMWare Tools from a Bootcamp install.

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rcardona2k
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There are apparently mixed results above with taking the Tools windows.iso from Fusion, burning it to a physical CD, boot into Boot Camp, and running setup.exe /c on the command line. What happened in your case? This site has a step-by-step for this in VirtualBox, but the details should map to Boot Camp. I don't have Boot Camp on my machine otherwise I would try it.

Force Remove VMware Tools and Manual Clean Up

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