hgfs services failed to start

[GTMK]

Hi,

I just finished my migration project from ESX 2.5.2 to 3.0.1 which overall went pretty smoothly. I migrated the VMs using VC 2.0, relocated the virtual disks to a VMFS-3 volume, upgraded the virtual hardware, started the VM, and upgraded the VMware Tools from build 21059. So far, so good, no problems, except for my Exchange servers.

Shutdown of the VMs after the tools upgrade took about 20 minutes, and after reboot, they complained about a service startup failure:

The hgfs service failed to start due to the following error:

The system cannot find the file specified.

What is that? As I said, this problem occurs only on the Exchange servers (all Exchange 2003 Enterprise with SP2 on Windows Server 2003 SP1 fully patched of course), and it appeared on every Exchange server.

Any thoughts? I haven't done the upgrade on the most important machine yet.

Georg.

[sbeaver]

Uninstall the VMware tools and reinstall but select custom as the option and deselect the hgfs option and you should be set

[sbeaver]

You can also...

Access the Windows Registry. Choose Start > Run, then type regedit. The Registry Editor window opens.

Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\NetworkProvider\Order\.

Right-click ProviderOrder and choose Modify. In the Edit String Value dialog box, edit the value data string and remove the word hgfs.

For example, if the value data string contains LanmanWorkstation,hgfs then change it to LanmanWorkstation.

If the value data string contains only hgfs, then erase it and leave the value data string empty.

Click OK.

Close the registry editor. Choose File > Exit.

Reboot the virtual machine.

[doomdevice]

I´ve seen this error on terminal server too.

hgfs is the shared folder option, which cannot really be used with VMware ESX.

So there is no reason to install, so I can´t understand why this service is installed with typical choice durint vmware tools installation on ESX.

[admin]

Any chance the original exchange VM came from a workstation installation?

[GTMK]

Well, the picture I get is not consistent. Only one out of 4 Exchange servers has the hgfs entry in the registry key you mentioned - this is the one with the old tools.

In the past, I sometimes did (for whatever reason) a full install of the VMware tools in my VMs. It seems to me that the latest VMware tools upgrade does not remove the hgfs service in a clean fashion. Trying to modify the VMware Tools says that Shared Folders are not installed, but I still find HKLM\System\CurrentControl\Services\hgfs

On my test servers I am now unable to do a clean uninstall or reinstall of the VMware tools... Any idea how I should proceed? Unfortunately, I have no more test servers which are in the state of my production servers.

Georg.

[sbeaver]

What happens when you try to install or re-install?

[GTMK]

Removal of the VMware tools (via Add/Remove Software and via Install VMware tools) stuck at some point, and I could not cancel - only reboot the guest. I tried several things and didn't record everything (shame on me). The situation now is that I somehow uninstalled the tools, and when I try to install I get the message "... will perform an upgrade...". The upgrade apparently does not do very much, and the single components all have the indication "install on first use". When I try to install, the process hangs with the message "starting services", them comes

"Error 1920. Service VMware Tools Service (VMTools) failed to start. Verify that you have sufficient privileges".

I am the Administrator...

[GTMK]

... this one doesn't work for me.

http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=214719&#214719

[Petter_Lindgren]

The hgfs service failed to start due to the following

error:

The system cannot find the file specified.

Got the same problem with a few machines myself.

Solved it by copying hgfs.sys from a VM with upgraded tools to c:\windows\system32\drivers\

By the way, if you for some reason can't install the newest tools or are unable to uninstall the old tools; try mounting the VMware tools image from the 2.5.2 host to the new VM. I had to upgrade to the old tools from 2.5.2 and reboot to be able to install the new tools.

[FredPeterson]

Hello,

I am having this problem - on every VM I am cold migrating from ESX 2.5.1 to VI 3.0.1.

The root of the problem seems to be that when I start the cold migrated VM's up and try to do a tools install, it fails when it tries to remove the old tools. The only workaround I've come up with is to install the old tools, reboot, then install the newest tools.

When I install the old tools while running in ESX 3.x I specifically X out the "Shared Folders" components, but yet it still seems to keep this around.

The fixes I've seen for this, editing the registry and removing the NetworkProvider order entry, do not work as the registry keys talked about do not even contain the word hgfs.

When I go to Add/Remove after getting the newest tools installed, the Shared Folders is X'd out there so I'm confused how it even tries to load the driver in the first place. Plus, why the devil is it even there in the first place if ESX does not support that mechanism....

Unfortunately this ESX upgrade was done in a hurry up fashion due to a datacenter move, so I have no wiggle room to play with the VMs.

Any help would be appreciated. I still have about half the VM's to do in our production area and every single one of the VMs in the development area will have to be done yet as well.

This isn't preventing the operation of the VM's, they work fine, but it is a nuisance to see that popup and eventlog entry every reboot.

[FredPeterson]

FYI

I've stopped this from happening by going through the VMWare Tools Install - Custom Mode, prior to cold migrating and telling it to remove the Shared Folders component then.

This process does not work once its migrated for some reason.

[Chiel]

Ive had this problem.

Then i used a localadmin account to install the VMware tools and no more errors.

When i say local admin i account, i mean THE local admin account for that machine. Not an account thats placed in the local administrators group.

[MauroMan]

Hello, I had the same problem.

I modified the registry ...\Control\NetworkProvider\Order\ removing the word hgfs but the startup error still remain.

To solve the startup error 'hgfs services failed to start' i also deleted the 'hgfs' service from services list:

Is very simple, I deleted the key 'hgfs' from:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\

Hope this is useful to some people

Bye from Italy

MauroMan

[bulldude]

I have seen similar results and fixes using the above answers. Logging in as local admin and doing a modify and on occasion a repair seems to fix it. I have also deleted the service manually using the service command line tool which fixes the System event log; event id 7000 error.

From a command line type

sc delete hgfs

once you have deleted it you can install shared folders (if that is what you want on a server) and it will install correctly.

[Texiwill]

Hello,

Yes you can install shared folders but ESX does not support shared folders so the driver should not even be loaded when the VM runs from within ESX. This change was added to the latest vmware-tools on Linux and I imagine on Windows as well, as this is a major method to escape from the VM to the host when using VMware Workstation and VMware Server.

Best regards,

Edward

[calladd]

Another solution to this problem, if you do not want to delete the service and do not want to use shared folders is:

Go into the registry to HKLM\System\Current Control Set\hgfs look for the Start entry and change it's value from 2 to 4.

This will keep the hgfs service on the server but will prevent it from tring to start at boot up. Thus stopping the event log messages.