Win10: What a joke! Can't uninstall 6.07 and can't install 7.12

[jalexm]

Hello.

After upgrading from Win7 Ultimate x64 to Win10 Pro x64, VMware Player 6.07 stopped running. My VMs didn't open anymore.

I've tried to install 7.12 and get "The MSI ' ' failed" error. Well, tried to unistall 6.07 and get that message again!

Is this a joke? OK, guys, I didn't like the joke.

Please, show me a solution!

Note: I ran 6.07 installer and click Repair button. After that, VMtools were updated and I could reopen my VMs. But I can't upgrade to 7.12. That error message appears again.

[jalexm]

Well, free products have this issue: there is no support. If you have a problem, solve it yourself.

Since I got no answers, I had to investigate by myself.

The only way I found was this: VMware KB: Cleaning up after an incomplete uninstallation on a Windows host

Special attention to the section "Prerequisite steps" and after that I went to "Manually cleaning a Windows system".

It's a slow, tiring, boring and tedious process.

Item "7 - Delete these files" shows a list of files that is no accurate. Some files are not on those folders, others appears in more than one folder, etc.

Well, now I'm done.

The best thing to do is update from 6.07 to 7.12 BEFORE upgrading Windows.

But I didn't know that, so don't do what I did.

Hope this help.

Thanks.

[CookyMonzta]

From what I have read, even the software you pay for (namely, VMware Workstation) has this problem.

A slow, long, boring and tedious process tells you all you need to know about their unwillingness to fix the problem with removal and/or reinstallation.  I know of no othwr program that exhibits such a problem that requires an unnecessary mishmash of procedures to clean up the mess it creates, much less remove and/or reinstall the program.

[chrischambers]

that is interesting, cos I just updated my VM guest from Windows 7U to Windows 10 Pro, with little to no issues,

all I had to do after the upgrade was to go through and make sure that all the drivers were update.

apart from that no issues.   Cos I am hating windows 10 and about to delete the VM, I am reinstall Win 7

[CookyMonzta]

If I had to make a raw guess, I'd say Microsoft not only didn't bother to upgrade many of its generic Win7 hardware/software drivers for Win10 (mostly desktop-related), but5 also got rid of some of them.  That's why there seem to so many desktop problems with Win10, as opposed to laptop problems (unless I'm missing something); the worst of which is that it warns me that my backup hard drive is about to die, and I have tested it many times and it is quite healthy.  No such warning displayed in Win7.