How to Install VMware Tools

Products

• VMware Desktop Hypervisor
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

This article provides general steps to install VMware Tools in most VMware products.

Resolution

Installing VMware Tools

The following are general steps used to start the VMware Tools installation in most VMware products. Certain guest operating systems may require different steps, but these steps work for most operating systems. Links to more detailed steps for different operating systems are included in this article. 

 

To install VMware Tools in most VMware products:

1. Power on the virtual machine.
2. Log in to the virtual machine using an account with Administrator or root privileges.
3. Wait for the desktop to load and be ready.
4. In the user interface for the VMware product, locate the Install VMware Tools menu item, which is typically found under a Virtual Machine or Guest Operating System menu.
5. Based on the operating system specified when creating the virtual machine, the correct ISO CD-ROM image containing VMware Tools is mounted to the virtual CD-ROM of the virtual machine.
6. To view or modify the selected operating system, edit the settings of the virtual machine using the appropriate menu command, which varies by VMware product.

Install VMware Tools from the CD-ROM inside of the guest operating system:

• Installing VMware Tools in a Windows virtual machine
• Installing VMware Tools in an Ubuntu virtual machine
• Installing VMware Tools in a Linux virtual machine using RPM
• Installing VMware Tools in a Linux virtual machine using Compiler
• Installing VMware Tools in a Solaris virtual machine
• Installing VMware Tools in a Mac OS Guest

Packages for Linux Guest Operating Systems

In addition to the above procedures, most Linux distributions may also optionally install VMware Tools through a package manager. This allows VMware Tools to be installed or updated alongside other Linux components and the process is handled entirely within the guest OS.
 

Older releases of common Linux distributions can be configured to use Operating System Specific Packages (OSPs) and newer versions of Linux are provided with Open VM Tools natively. See VMware Tools compatibility with guest operating systems for more details.

Supported Guest Operating Systems

Guest operating system support varies by product and version. VMware Tools is designed to install smoothly on supported guests. Unsupported guests may require further steps to complete the VMware Tools installation. For a list of supported guest operating systems, see the VMware Compatibility Guide.

 

Minimum version of VMware Tools that is supported on a particular guest operating system is the version that is bundled with the oldest version of the VMware product supporting that particular guest operating system.

Note:
To download the VMware Tools for the guest operating system, visit the Package repository

With VMware Workstation 7, the option of downloading updated VMware Tools can be achieved by navigating to Help > Check for Updates on the Web.

 

If the VMware Tools was never downloaded for VMware Workstation 7, when clicking Install/Upgrade VMware Tools, a prompt will appear to download VMware Tools.

 

Reference the following articles for additional troubleshooting information:

• VMware Tools installation fails with Error 1722
• Manually Building VMware Tools Kernel Modules in Ubuntu Guests
• Manually Building VMware Tools Kernel Modules in SLES and SLED Guests
• On certain Linux guest operating systems, the VMware Tools process vmware-user does not start automatically

Additional Information

More information on VMware Tools is available at:

• Overview of VMware Tools
• Installing VMware Tools

Product-specific installation Information:

• Installing VMware Tools Manually in a Fusion Virtual Machine running Windows
• Installing VMware Tools in VMware Player

Additional Information:

• WDDM and XPDM graphics driver support with WDDM and XPDM graphics driver support with ESX, ESXi, Workstation and Fusion