Vmplayer 15.5.5 Upgrade ends with Setup failed to create the VMware group on the system

[fandango2]

Dear All,

Can anybody help please?

Context: WIN10 Pro 1909 -- OS Build 18363.836 (latest patches installed)

Issue: Upgrade VMware-player-15.5.2-15785246 to VMware-player-15.5.5-16285975

ends with error message “Setup failed to create the VMware group on the system”

Situation: V15.5.2 has been running perfectly for months without any problems. Yesterday VMware Player proposed to upgrade to V15.5.5.

This ended in a complete nightmare:

1. The upgrade ended with the message “Setup failed to create the VMware group on the system”

2. And started a rollback ending with the message

“VMware Workstation 15 Player setup was interrupted. Your system has not been modified.

To install this program at a later time, please run the installation again.

Click the Finish button to exit the Setup Wizard.”

3. … Your system has not been modified … : NOT True! The previous version was completely removed and the NIC was broken! So, no network anymore!

4. After 3 hours of testing I uninstalled my VPN program,  which activated the NIC again.

5. Manually trying to reinstall V15.5.2 or V15.5.5 gave each time “Setup failed to create the VMware group on the system

6. I cleared manually the registry and removed all entries on disk mentioning vmware

          Btw, VMware-player-15.5.2-15785246.exe /clean does not work!

7. I ran VMware-player-15.5.2-15785246.exe and VMware-player-15.5.5-16285975.exe as administrator

8. System Restore to previous version failed

9.I lost a complete day testing and trying, and the result is that VMware Player cannot be installed anymore

Question: How to repair the message “Setup failed to create the VMware group on the system”

Thanks for helping, Luk.

[chrispookabsolu]

Hi, I can confirm I have the same issue.

Upgrading from VM Player 15.5.1 to 15.5.5 on a Dell XPS 13 9370 with Windows 10 Home version 2004. I attempted upgrade from the Help > Software Updates menu item within VM Player.

The error message is "There was a problem updating a software component".

[fandango2]

Hello, I finally could fix my PC again, but I still have no clue of why I got and how to fix the error/message Setup failed to create the VMware group on the system.

I still do not even know what this message means ☹

What I did:

Using a previously made WIN10-Recovery USB stick, I did a “Advanced start-up Recovery” from within Win10 and booted from the stick.

From there I could choose a System restore point, which was 3 weeks old.

A more recent System Restore Point, was not possible because each time I attempted to install VMplayer, VMware creates a restore point.

Since I did a few attempts (more than 10), it destroyed a lot of the available good restore points. Anyway …

I could reinstall a 3 weeks old situation and started from there again to build up the system.

I had VMplayer V15.5.2 back. BUT starting a VM resulted in an error telling C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Player\x64\PXE-E1000E.ROM and a few other files were missing.

Fortunately I could restore them from my backup and was back in business!

I could never have thought that an innocent upgrade of VMplayer would drop me in such a Technical Swamp!

It took me 12 hours to recover from this situation ….

[chrispookabsolu]

Hi, I was able to upgrade today with the release of 15.5.6. There's no release notes mention of a specific fix for the upgrade install error I encountered but it did upgrade and I am running 15.5.6 successfully on Windows 10 now.

[gowthamram169]

The same problem in my system also could you please help me to resolve it

[AndreasBorg]

I also have this error message (“Setup failed to create the VMware group on the system”), but with a fresh install. I have tried the following versions:

VMware-player-16.1.0-17198959

VMware-player-15.5.7-17171714

But I get the same error.

I have tried:

• Updating Visual C++
• Win 11 updates and driver updates
• HyperV is enabled

Can anyone help?