Hello just signed up for the VMware community. I'm a long time user and first time caller, eeerrr I mean poster. :smileylaugh:
I uninstalled VMware 7 build 203739 this week and evidently didn't get everything cleaned out. I then went to install VMware 8 and it tried to unistall the previous version of VMware first and then game me the "MSI failed" ... So I did some investigating
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1308
and here
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&externalId=1031302
-I ran command prompts and went into the registry to try and manually clean everything. I went into services and disabled VMware DHCP, VMware Nat Service, and VMware Arbitration Service because I couldn't get rid of them.
-I also went into Device Manager (show hidden files) and attempted to uninstall
hcmon
VMware Network Application Interface
VMparport
vmx86
VMware Bridge Protocol
again with no luck after numerous tries and reboots. I also did a search on my Windows 7 64 bit Ultimate and found several duplicate VMware.dll and VM type dll's. (Yikes now I'm screwed)
This has been completely frustrating and I appreciate all the links and threads to read lengthy "how to" get rid of VMware totally. This reminds me allot of when Symantec/Norton a few years back was such a behemothly bloated software to get off your system until they came out with their uninstaller tools.
I found these in my System32 file after I thought I had deleted everything but couldn't get rid of any of my VMware servcies or PlugnPlay. Not sure which ones are "exactly" connected to VMware or others that are clones for another program.
So my request is for the developement of a "complete" uninstall tool that will remove safetly all the VMware folders, duplicate .dll and regular files without screwing over my integrated MSI installer. VMware is too complex and integrates so closely to the home system the duplication becomes almost integrated which is ironic when it comes to removing it from your computer. Now I've installed VMware before on 64 and 86 bit systems and didn't have any problems uninstalling but for some reason ran into snags this time. Thought I'd share and hope to see a future with less of a headache removing VMware from our computers.
Thanks.
Windows 7 64 Ultimate
Intel Core 2 Q6600
Asus P5N-D
4GB-OCZ-DDR2
GeForce 8800 640 GTS