Unable to Install VmWare Workstation Pro 15.5.5 Update

[cstocci]

Folks,

I guess I am not the first one to have an issue with the updating process on Workstation Pro 15.5.5.  I have Windows 10 2004 (just did the big updated yesterday) 64-bit.  Never had any issues with any other update since the old version 12 days and all of the version 15.x.x until this particular 15.5.5.  Seems the failure comes from the update process not finding a Microsoft Visual C++ 2017 Redistributable package.  I have all of the latest including the Microsoft Visual C++ 2015-2019 Redistributable (x86) - 14.24.28127 and Microsoft Visual C++ 2015-2019 Redistributable (x64) - 14.24.28127.  For me to go back to the 2017 is, at best, nothing new and, at worst, a possible cause of issues for the new MS Windows 10 May 2020 update.

I think VMWare needs to have the ability to sense if the newest MS Visual C++ Redistributables are present and sufficient rather than have the users running around in MS websites downloading and installing unnecessary and potentially BSOD and Black screens failures trying to get the VMWare Updates to install.

Chris

[cstocci]

Hi,

Forgot to mention that I currently have VMWare Workstation Pro version 15.5.2 build-15785246 working great!  So I am not jumping across many versions.  Version 15.5.2 to 15.5.5 should only be a minor upgrade and not be causing these kind of upgrade errors/problems that several users are already experiencing.

I think the issue is probably caused by the major Windows 10 upgrade gong to version 2004 which just happened a few days ago.  If this is a fact, then many VMWare Workstation Pro users are going to get the same issue as several of us have already expressed as Microsoft distributes the upgrade in stages as they have indicated about 1 week ago.

If anybody has the same experiences, I would like to hear about it so we could compare notes.  BTW, the upgrade failure suggests that we are suppose to install Microsoft Visual C++ 2017 version 14.3 Redistributables which, unfortunately according to Microsoft, does not exist, so this is a dead end to the "fix."

Chris

[Mits2020]

It's not the Windows update, it's Workstation's built-in check for the VC++ version existing on your system.

I posted a solution for this problem for version `15.5.2 and I am confident that it applies to 15.5.5 too: Solution: New Workstation 15.5.x installation problems due to VC++ redistributables

You need to decompress the .exe installation file (using the /x switch) and run the .msi installer.

[cstocci]

Hi MITS 2020,

Thank you as that did work!  My thought still stands as to why should anybody have to go through this effort to implement a small upgrade?  I agree with you, either use a simple downloadable program to "sniff" if the correct MS Visual C++ files are present and , if not, go get them before installing the main or upgraded version.

Thanks again!

Chris

[Mits2020]

There are some other threads with the same issue, where the host for some reason does not allow the WS installer to extract and write temporary files. So, we have one cure for several childhood diseases