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ant
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Stuck greyed out "(Downloading VMware Tools)" option when trying to start its tools install/upgrade.

Hello.

I never had this problem before with VMware Workstations' tools upgrades and installations, but all of my v10.0.1 Windows guests (from v6 and newer days) are not wanting to run the tools installer to upgrade/install.  "(Downloading VMware Tools)" is greyed out in the menu and doesn't seem to do anything. Guest OS' disc drive still shows and not the tools' drive. No errors I can see too. What's going on and how do I fix this?

Thank you in advance. Smiley Happy

9 Replies
ant
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

I noticed for Windows guest VMs that already have the latest v10.0.1 tools, reinstalling also gets stuck. Smiley Sad

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ant
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Weird. It works again. I didn't change or re(boot/start) my computer. Has anyone had this happened before?

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ITFishGuy
Contributor
Contributor

I'm having the same issue.  I prefer the old way of dealing with this where you could cancel an install and try again.  The greying out and download is not a step in the right direction.  Where is it downloading the tools from host or web?  Why can I not stop the process?  I also wonder how this behaves with a Linux guest as I am pretty sure the firewall is up and might be blocking this.  No status and no way of knowing if there is an issue with the process.  This appears to be a new thing since i upgraded to 10.0.2 build-1744117.  In the past this process rarely broke, but at least I had control over what happened.  I may have to fish around for the tools and pull them in manually rather than wait on the process.  So I tried pulling in the files to manually run an upgrade from a CLI on Ubuntu and that just hangs.  Now whether or not that happens because that other process cannot be stopped is a very distinct possibility.  Killed the upgrade process and tried again that did not change the status of Downloading VMWareTools.  Shut down the VM and closed workstation.  I may go back to the prior version.  Yeah this was weird behavior, I tried upgrading tools from the menu which didn't work....twice.  If I ran from the prompt at the bottom of my screen it works.  So if anyone else runs into the greyed "Downloading VMWare Tools" reboot the VM and install form the prompt at the bottom.   Well since the tools install is dorked up it's going to be faster to rebuild the VM than to actually answer yes to every overwrite prompt.

After pondering for a while I wonder if an in place upgrade leaves out the tools portion so that the upgrade will run a bit faster.  I usually download and update manually and when I do I pull down the entire package.  I'm sure there is a KB somewhere that goes over the process and the details. 

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mfelker
Expert
Expert

I'm not exactly sure if you upgrading from WS   10.0.1 to 10.0.2.  If you do install WS 10.0.2 the VMware Tools packages are already available so if you upgrade the Tools you should  not have to download anything - just rerun the Tools install program.  I'm assuming the seem applies to the Windows version as Linux.  No  problems for me on either Windows or Linux guests.

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shaunm2
Contributor
Contributor

I realize this is an old thread but I had the same problem and I think I found a solution.  I'm using VMware Workstation 10 on a Windows host.

Start Workstation

Edit->Preferences->Updates

Click on "Connection Settings"

Change "Proxy Settings" from "Windows proxy settings" to "No proxy"

Click Ok.

Restart Workstation

After doing this, the greyed out VM->Downloading VMware Tools menu item becomes an active VM->Install VMware Tools menu item and I was able to successfully install the latest VMware tools.

ant
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

shaunm2 wrote:

I realize this is an old thread but I had the same problem and I think I found a solution.  I'm using VMware Workstation 10 on a Windows host.

Start Workstation

Edit->Preferences->Updates

Click on "Connection Settings"

Change "Proxy Settings" from "Windows proxy settings" to "No proxy"

Click Ok.

Restart Workstation

After doing this, the greyed out VM->Downloading VMware Tools menu item becomes an active VM->Install VMware Tools menu item and I was able to successfully install the latest VMware tools.

Interesting. I haven't seen this issue for a while, but I checked my settings. Mine was to use Windows proxy settings too. I assume that is by default. Did you have this problem often? Mine was rare.

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shaunm2
Contributor
Contributor

I suspect that the act of toggling the proxy setting from "Windows proxy" to "No proxy" is enough to trigger a synchronization that fixes the problem. If I switch back to "Windows proxy" the "Install VMware Tools" menu remains active. So far it has happened to me once so I haven't been able to experiment further.

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truepegleg
Contributor
Contributor

Hmm.  This happened to me once as well when I converted a VM from ESXi to Fusion using the ovftool utility in Fusion (on mac of course.)  Turns out the ovftool conversion somehow removed my CDrom.  Have you checked the settings on the VM to see if indeed you have a CD-rom?  If not, simply go into your settings and "Add" a new CD-rom.  In Fusion, you might have to stop the VM first to add it.   Once, you've done that, you should now have the option to install VMtools available from the menu bar - Virtual Machine > Install VMtools.

shmu26
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I had the same issue and the same solution after exporting a VM from VirtualBox.

Once I added a CD Rom, I was able to install VMware tools.

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