VMWare Workstation 12.5.3 Tools Issue

[kirm1955]

As soon as I upgraded to v12.5.3 from 12.5.2 my shared folders worked till I upgraded VMware tools. Keeps on telling me something along the line of cannot connect to network shares. Under file explorer, there is a red x even though I have Shared Folders enabled. If I click on the shared folders, it then opens up my shared folders and the red x disappears and works properly.

However, the next time I open up the vm, I keep getting the same notification that it cannot connect to network along with the big red x on my shared folders. There is some issue with the new VMware tools that is causing this. Works fine in all my vmachines under the older vmtools till I upgrade tools itself. Went back to 12.5.2 were all is working great.

[bonnie201110141]

Thanks for reporting the issue. It is a bug with VMTools 10.1.5. I have filed an internal bug to track it. Thanks!

[steve_goddard]

Thanks for reporting I will look into this.

It could be a side-effect due to a fix we made to make the start up of the client demand start and so is started by the VMware Tools service now.

I will look into this and update with a workaround or a more detailed explanation at least.

Thanks.

Steve

[kirm1955]

Hello Steve,

Glad to report that I did get it working in 12.5.4. Unfortunately, one must uninstall VMware tools, reboot, and then install VMware tools and reboot once again. It fails to work on just upgrading.

As I use VMware to run MS Insider Preview, I always had this issue on any OS version change so was well aware of this fix. It was just in my other virtual machines, if it was just a program update of VMware, one could just upgrade VMware Tools.

Hope this helps out in your bug fix. Thanks for responding.

Johnny

[steve_goddard]

Ok only on upgrades this issue occurs. Great to know. I will see what I can discover for that scenario.

Thanks
Steve

[kirm1955]

I am running several virtual machines and found with some, after doing 2 reboots, it would not clear up unless I actually powered down the vm. It would show a red x on shared folders, even though clicking on it would open up my shared folders and the red x would disappear.

[kirm1955]

Just did a clean install of Win10 Creator Insider Build 15063, and all the tricks I had posted earlier would not work. Still have the annoying red x on my shared folders but if I click on the folder, it opens properly and then the red x disappears till next reboot. Then get the notification that VMware could not connect again. I have uninstalled and reinstalled VMware tools over 5 times, and it just will not correct itself.

Very frustrating.

[kirm1955]

This issue is still ongoing with v12.5.5. Even though the red x is there and on every start keep getting notification that VMware tools could not connect to shared drives. If I click on the shared drives folder with the red x, it does open up to my shared drives.

Please correct, that's now 2 versions later and issue is still there.

[steve_goddard]

Just to be clear  that the red-x on the drive letter just means that when the drive was created

by Explorer shell that Shared Folder's client was not fully initialized.

When you are logged and have File Explorer running and see  the drive it Shared Folders client

will be up and running.

At this point, it should be treated the same as any network (redirected) drive, Microsoft CIFS drives included,

just click on the drive. It will successfully reconnect fine and all the shares will be

accessible. VMware drives just don't have the authentication dialog that the Microsoft shares require.

It is really only cosmetic due to the timing of our initialization and the Explorer shell drive

initialization. If we are done first, then the drive will appear green.

To work around this issue so that after a reboot of the Windows VM it will always come up with

a green status (unless you have disabled the feature via the user interface), you can do the

following steps:

1) run regedit

2) navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\vmhgfs\

3) edit the registry value "Start" REG_DWORD which is currently 3 (DEMAND START) and change 1 (SYSTEM START).

4) exit regedit

5) reboot the Windows VM.

Let me know how it goes.

Thanks

Steve

[gippetto1969]

Shared Folder issue: Could not reconnect all network drives.

The problem arise since 12.5.3.

Not solved in 14.0.0 Build 6661328.

Will this ever be solved?

[jam3972]

Thank you Steve! The registry fix did it for me.
I had been running an old version of the tools for ages to avoid this. Finally I can use the latest version.

I wish this was default behavior in the new tools. Or at least configurable in the options.

To anyone still having this problem, use the registry fix posted by steve goddard