It seems Fusion 13.0.1's VMWare Tools installer isn't compatible with Windows XP (Pro, SP2)

[gen843620]

I and several of my customers run VMWare Fusion 12 and 13 on Intel-based Macs.

Fusion 13.0.1 has been fine for Windows 10 and 11, but tonight I upgraded a customer's (macOS Monterey) Fusion 12 to Fusion 13 and VMWare Tools failed to install, including from d:\setup.exe (error appeared that setup.exe isn't a valid win32 program).

I have lots of experience over the last 10 or so years with customers' old messed up VMWare Tools updates and tried all my tricks, like deleting all registry keys with "vmware tools" matching whole phrase, but none helped.

So I created a new virtual machine from a Windows XP DVD -- a total clean install -- and the same thing happened: vmware tools wouldn't install even from d:\setup.exe (and the same error appeared "setup.exe isn't a valid Win32 app...").

I thought maybe if I could install .NET 4 or earlier, setup.exe would work, but without internet access with very old IE within the VM and without drag and drop file sharing from the Mac and without sharing enabled (because Tools wasn't installed), I don't see how I can install .NET 4 or earlier from a MS download -- AND I don't even know if .NET 4 would help.

So I downgraded VMWare Fusion 13 to v12 and VMWare Tools installed fine in WinXP.

I'm not sure, but it seems Fusion 13 programmers and QA testers didn't try v13 VMWare Tools with Windows XP. 

I still have about 4 customers using XP to run very old, very obscure specialized excellent but abandoned software for their industries. Several other customers use Fusion 13 with Win10 or Win11 to run Windows accounting software and VMWare Tools updates easily.

If Fusion 13's VMWare Tools wasn't intended to work WinXP and the developers don't care, please let us know so we can avoid the hassle of flailing, failing then downgrading. I can't charge my clients for all the time I spent upgrading, testing then downgrading. This issue really dinged my revenue today.

EDIT: maybe Fusion 13's VMWare Tools requires WinXP SP3. The above issue occurred with WinXP SP2. I just noticed it was SP2 after installing another VM from the WinXP DVD in Fusion 12, which has no trouble with WinXP SP2.

[Technogeezer]

So in case anyone at VMware is interested, ( @Mikero  are you out there??? ) here's an interesting snippet from the VMware.log file for an XP VM:

2023-04-27T18:23:29.281Z In(05) vmx Powering on guestOS 'winXPPro' using the configuration for 'winXPPro'.
2023-04-27T18:23:29.282Z In(05) vmx ToolsISO: open of /Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Library/isoimages/x86_x64/isoimages_manifest.txt failed: Could not find the file
2023-04-27T18:23:29.282Z In(05) vmx ToolsISO: Updated cached value for imageName to 'windows.iso'.
2023-04-27T18:23:29.282Z In(05) vmx ToolsISO: Selected Tools ISO 'windows.iso' for 'winXPPro' guest. 

I checked and the file that the message says doesn't exist really does. It's just that it's not in the x86_64 directory. It's one level above it in the isoimages directory.

If you look at the file isoimages_manifest.txt, it contains mappings from the VM machine OS type to the ISO file needed for Tools.

Hmmm. A coincidence that Fusion 13 defaulted to using the wrong ISO because it couldn't find this file? I think not....

Given this information, one would think that it wouldn't be too hard to fix this....