Cannot upgrade to 16.2.1 (windows)

[TheDauthi]

I saw similar problems on the board currently, but none exactly matching my problem (and the closest ones did not solve my problem).

I'm currently running 16.1.2, and am trying to upgrade to 16.2.1. I have tried both an upgrade install and a fresh install from vmware's site. Both have had the same behavior.

The installer goes through the install process to the 100% mark... then rolls back at the exact end and says it failed to install. I can't find a log that helps with why this might happen. Windows Event Viewer is not helpful: I get a message saying it was ending the installer transaction, a second that says "Installation Failed", A third that says Windows installer installed the product, but it had an error ( Installation success or error status: 1603.)

Afterwards, vmware can be started with no problem, but I lose network access inside all VMs (I figured out why before, maybe I can figure out what the steps were to fix again).

Does anyone know what might be going on, or where I can find some more logging information to try to find out?

EDIT: I forgot to add, the host is Windows 10. I also get the exact same error if I attempt to repair install or completely uninstall the product.

[CarltonR]

I would suggest that this may well be related to a Win 10 permissions issue.  I'm sure you've searched for this, but this might help "error 1603: A fatal error occurred during installation".

[TheDauthi]

Yep. I tried that (specifically the last one; the others don't apply since I also can't remove VMWare, it's not on a subst drive and no compression is enabled). System already owns everything and has full control. Maybe I can use icacls and takeown to make sure there's not something I missed (like a corrupted entry that isn't inheriting from the parent), but I'm hesitant to do so when the current version works, I just can't upgrade it.