From time to time, VMware Tools inside a VM which is running under ESXi (4, 4.1, etc) might have a yellow exclamation warning and showing Vmware Tools running but unsupported. However, we are 100% sure that VMware Tools is up to date! In this situation, simply uninstalling and reinstalling the VMware Tools might not work. Instead, follow this procedure:
- Uninstall VMware Tools
- Restart the guest O/S as requested
- Upon startup, do NOT install VMware Tools immediately (and of course, cancel all Found New Hardware wizard)
- Instead, search for "vmware" in all files and folders in the C drive. Yes, absolutely every file and folder on "vmware". Then delete them in a way or another.
Note: Some typical paths are the followings:- C:\WINDOWS\system32\ReinstallBackups
- C:\WINDOWS\Prefetch
- C:\Documents and Settings\admin\Application Data
- C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data
Replace "Documents and Settings" with "Users" in newer versions of Windows.
It might be necessary to manually go through all folders in C:\Documents and Settings because some of them don't show up in search result.
- Reinstall VMware Tools normally and everything should be OK.
