VMware Tools Toolbox UI is no longer available in a guest operating system

Products

• VMware Desktop Hypervisor
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:
Following a recent upgrade of VMware Tools in your guest operating system resulted in the following:

• VMware Tools tray icon no longer presents the Open VMware Tools option.
• Main Toolbox UI appears to be missing.
• The tabs and GUI configuration options that are designed to provide access to time sync, power scripts, and so on, are no longer available.
  

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 5.1
VMware Fusion 5.x
VMware Workstation 10.x (Linux)
VMware Player 5.x (Linux)
VMware Fusion 6.x
VMware Workstation 10.x (Windows)
VMware Fusion 7.x
VMware Player 5.x (Windows)
VMware Workstation 9.x (Linux)
VMware Workstation 9.x (Windows)

Cause

This behavior is intentional.

Resolution

The last releases of VMware Tools to support the Toolbox UI were the versions bundled with:

• Workstation 8.0
• Fusion 4.0
• Player 4.0
• ESXi 5.0

For more information, see the Product Support Notices section in VMware vSphere 5.0 Release Notes where it states:

VMware Toolbox. vSphere 5.0 is the last release to include support for the VMware Tools graphical user interface, VMware Toolbox. VMware will continue to update and support the Toolbox command-line interface (CLI) to perform all VMware Tools functions.

To utilize the functionality previously provided by the Toolbox UI, the VMware Tools command-line utility can be used. For more information on the use of the command line, see VMware Tools Configuration Utility User's Guide.

Additional Information

VMware Tools の Toolbox UI がゲスト OS 内で使用できなくなった