Incomplete upgrade to Workstation 15 on headless Windows Server

[rspierenburg]

Good morning,

I've been running VM Workstation 14 on a Windows Server 2016 machine via RDP for a Nextcloud vm.  I was prompted that Workstation 15 was available for download and upgrade and proceeded to run the upgrade.  It go to the point where it tried to uninstall Workstation 14 and I lost RDP connection to my server.  I waited for a while but could not re-connect to the server either via RDP or share connects.  I had to force-reboot the server and all was well again, but I was left with a crippled Workstation 14 that will run the Nextcloud VM but the virtual network is corrupt and I cannot connect to the Nextcloud instance.  I've re-tried the Workstation 15 install and it tells me there is a pending update already in the works, so I try to let it run and I lose connection to the server once again.  I've since tried a 'Repair' and a full uninstall on the Workstation 14 with the exact same results.

Just wondering if there was any manual install/uninstall items I could try to either a) Complete the upgrade to Workstation 15 or b) fix the networking in the Workstation 14 install.

Thank you,

Robert

[RDPetruska · Accepted solution]

Try a reboot first, in case the uninstall pending flag is still loaded in the registry.  If that doesn't work, search the KnowledgeBase for the VMware Cleaner (I think it's article 1308).

[rspierenburg]

Thank you so much, I ended up throwing on a spare monitor, keyboard and mouse.  With a reboot and rerunning the install all worked well.  Guess is just doesn't like doing updates via RDP. Lesson learned.