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FrozeN201110141
Contributor
Contributor

Errors updating VMTools

Hello everyone. Recently i had to update Tools on our 70 ESX - 800VM 4.1U1 VDI environment. It's a mix of Windows 7, 2003 and XP (all 32bit). VMs can't be rebooted.

I wrote a little script using "Update-Tools -NoReboot" cmdlet. Initially it failed hard on 95% of VMs. Solved 70% of them restarting VMware Tools Service.

Now i'm stuck with a "Operation timed out" on Windows 2003. The problem is

ErroreVMTools.PNG

popping inside the VM and stopping installation. If i log on the VM and click OK the installation goes on without problems.

We are migrating our server infrastructure (100ESX/1800VM) to 4.1.1 too and I'm not sure about using that buggy cmdlet on a so critical environment. Do someone have a solution or a better way?

Froz

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4 Replies
Sreejesh_D
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

its a known issue with ESX 4.1. apply the patch "ESX410-201101201-SG" and retry tools upgrade. See the details on this issue in patch release notes  - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1027904.

If you install VMware Tools on a virtual machine on which the Print Spooler service is stopped (Administrative Tools >Services > Print Spooler), and if you select the Thin Print feature (Install VMware Tools > Typical or Custom and selectThin Print under Custom Setup > VMware Device Drivers), uninstalling VMware Tools results in the following error message: Runtime Error! Program: C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Tools\TPVCGateway.exe. This application has requested the Runtime to terminate it in an unusual way. Please contact the application's support team for more information. Click OK to remove the error message and uninstall VMware Tools. In this patch, the error message does not appear.
FrozeN201110141
Contributor
Contributor

Oh, thank you. Unfortunately this patch is already installed on our environment. I tried to netstart Print Spooler without success, too.

Now i'm trying the update using Invoke-VMScript cmdlet together with silent install of VMTools.

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bulletprooffool
Champion
Champion

Is it possible that ou have previously updated the tools on these VMs (to the previous version) and have still not rebooted the VMs since - so ar now applying a second update without a reboot?

One day I will virtualise myself . . .
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FrozeN201110141
Contributor
Contributor

I don't think so, our VDI VMs are rebooting every night, and usually forced to reboot if uptime > 15 days.

Now using Invoke-VMScript the script is running and never ending (using msiexec /i ...). If i try with -RunAsync param script is executing to the end without running the batch.

This is getting frustrating :smileyconfused:

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