Workstation Pro: After upgrade to 12.5.5 VMware Tools fails to install drivers.

[AndreaMazzario]

After I upgraded to Workstation Pro 12.5.5 (from 12.5.2) I was shown the message that I needed to upgrade the VmWare Tools. The beginning of the installation started normally, but then I received the error “Setup failed to install the VMCI Virtual Machine Communication driver automatically. This driver will have to be installed manually.” After clicking OK, I got the same message for the mouse driver, and the SVGA driver.

My host is Windows 10 Pro x64, 16GB RAM, all current updates installed.

The guest is Windows 7 Professional x64 Service Pack 1, all current updates.

Any suggestion on what can cause the error?

Thank you in advance.

Andrea

[bonnie201110141]

Please completely uninstall VMware Tools from control panel in your Windows 7 guest operating system, reboot your guest os, and then install tools again. Please let us know if that solves your problem. Thanks!

[AndreaMazzario]

Thank you for the suggestion, I did uninstall VMware tools from the WIndow 7 control panel, I rebooted the guest, then I installed the tools again, but I still got the same error messages as before. I have no problem installing the drivers manually, but are there instructions somewhere on how to do that?

Thanks

Andrea

[bluefirestorm]

One more try to uninstall/reinstall

1. Reinstall VMware Tools from Menu -
2. Go to Command Prompt with Admin and go to virtual DVD path of tools
3. D:\Setup64 /c
4. Restart VM
5. Reinstall VMware Tools From Menu

The /c supposedly clears out all registry information.

There is also a way to extract the individual drivers

D:\Setup64 /a

It will prompt for a location to extract the drivers to.

[AndreaMazzario]

Thank you for the suggestion, but this did not work either.

After forcing the uninstall with D:\Setup64 /c I rebooted and attempted again to install the VMware Tools.

The only visible difference was that this time the installer did sit for a relatively long time displaying the message "installing the VMCI driver", so I was thinking it would really install it, but it finally displayed the same error messages.

I did run the setup64 /a command, but all that did was to populate a directory with the file VMware Tools64.msi and a bunch of other files. Executing the VMware Tools64.msi gave again the usual error, but I had no idea if any of the other files was supposed to be a specific driver installer, so did not do anything else with them.

Any other suggestion?

Thanks

Andrea

[bluefirestorm]

I wonder if the error messages are just red herrings but that some (if not all) of the drivers are installed.

A visible cue would be the display. If the VMware display driver is not installed I think the display would be limited to 800x600 or 1024x768 (or some other low resolution). Another way of checking is to go to Device Manager and see whether the Display Adapter name is "VMware SVGA 3D".

For 12.5.5. tools, the important fix is that for the SVGA video driver as there was fix for memory usage issues.

For the extract, you would be able to see a folder called with many device drivers

<Your extract folder>\VMware\VMware Tools\VMware\Drivers\

Some drivers would be pretty straightforward to install (like video/audio) as they would be treated just as how they would with physical machine (i.e. go to Device Manager and update drivers on the selected and select the extract folder as the location). I am not sure about the other devices.

Do you see "VMware VMCI Bus Device" and "VMware VMCI Host Device" under your Windows 7 VM Device Manager under System Devices?

[bonnie201110141]

It looks to me that drivers are not removed cleanly after uninstalling tools. So you can try the following to manually removed them:

1. Uninstall tools completely from control panel

2. Manually delete tools installation files under C:\Program Files\VMware, C:\Program Files\Common Files\VMware,

3. Reboot guest OS.

4. (Please backup registry before deletion) Manually delete drivers in registry under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\, please delete all vmware related drivers including vmci, vm3dmp, vmaudio, vmhgfs, vmmemctl, vmmouse, VMRawDisk, VMTools, vmusbmouse, vmvss, vmware physical disk helper services, VMwareCAF*.

5. Reboot guest OS

6. Install Tools again.

Let me know if it works for you. Thanks!

[AndreaMazzario]

When I reboot the guest Windows 7 after the installation of WMware Tools with the error messages I get an error from Windows 7:
Device driver software was not successfully installed VMware VMCI Host Device

Screen resolution is still 1920x1200, and the device Manager gives VMware SVGA 3D as the Display Adapter. Its driver is provided by VMware Inc, but has a date of 10/16/2015, and version 8.15.33: is that the version with the fix you mention? (This is the same version I have in a VM I saved before upgrading VMware Tools).

The mouse driver (which also supposedly could not be installed) is also provided by VMware, date 3/26/2012, version 12.5.2.0 (again, this is the same version I have in a VM I saved before upgrading VMware Tools)

I see the VMware VMCI Bus Device in the System Devices, driver provided by VMware Inc., but with a delivery date of 8/14/2014, and version 9.7.10. Is that really the 12.5.5 version? (again, this is the same version I have in a VM I saved before upgrading VMware Tools)

I also see VMware VMCI Host Device in the System Device, but this one states “Unknown” as the Drive provider, and none of the other Driver information is there. I tried to tell it to “Update Driver”, but then I got a pop-up saying “Windows found driver software for your device but encountered an error while attempting to install it.” The driver in a previous VM had delivery date of 8/14/2014, and version 9.7.10)

I don’t know about the “right” version of the other VMware drivers, but the only one with an actual problem seems to be the VMCI Host Device. Is that something important, that I would need?

Thank you for your help!

Andrea

[bluefirestorm]

Go figure I have one Windows 10 x64 Pro VM running on Fusion 8.5.6 and another Windows 10 x64 Pro VM running on Workstation 12.5.5 and each behave differently when it comes to the VMware Tools.

I have VMware Tools 10.1.6 build-5214329. This can be seen on the VMware Tools icon that appears on the System Tray (which I can see in the Fusion VM). If you don't see the VM icon the version and build number should also be visible in the Add/Remove Programs (which is the case with my Workstation 12.5.5. VM).

On both VMs

SVGA driver version 8.15.1.50, date 12/13/2016

VMware Audio driver version 5.10.0.3506, date 4/21/2009

VMCI Bus device driver version 9.8.6.0, date 5/25/2016

VMCI Host device driver version 9.8.6.0, date 5/25/2016

[bonnie201110141]

From Workstation 12.5.2 to 12.5.5, no drivers changes happen in VMware Tools in guest.

[AndreaMazzario]

Removing the VMware drivers from the registry definitely made a difference, after rebooting the screen was only 1024x768 and the mouse did not work.

I started the VMwareTools installation from the Menu, but I still got the same driver installation errors!

After rebooting Windows 7 gave warnings that there were errors in the installation of the drivers and the mouse still did not work.

I checked the Windows event log and I did not see any recent error messages

It looks like that if I really want to have the latest VMware tools I need to create a new VM. I would prefer to avoid doing that, for now the VM seems to work fine with the older drivers:

SVGA driver version 8.15.1.33, date 10/16/2015

VMCI Bus device driver version 9.7.1.0, date 8/14/2014

VMCI Host device driver version 9.7.1.0, date 8/14/2014

Actually, looking at these versions, they are probably older than 12.5.2, which was my previous VMware version? Maybe there were already previous upgrades of VMware tools that failed to install the new drivers but did not give any error message?

Thank you again for your help.

Andrea