Clean uninstallation of VMware Tools in Windows Guest OS

Products

• VMware Desktop Hypervisor

Issue/Introduction

To upgrade or install VMware Tools successfully in the Windows Guest OS.

Symptoms:

Upgrading/Installing the VMware tools or uninstallation of VMware Tools sometimes fails with the following errors.

• Error: "The feature you are trying to use is on a network resource that is unavailable.  Click OK to try again, or enter an alternate path to a folder containing the installation package "VMware Tools64.msi" in the box below.
• Error: VGAuthservice and Alias Manager cannot be installed.
• Error: A network error occurred while attempting to read from the file C:\Windows\Installer\VMware Tools.msi.
   

Cause

This is an issue with Microsoft Windows Installer. The problem can occur when the original install path from the older version of VMware Tools is invalid.
 

Resolution

The process to Clean uninstallation of VMware Tools in Windows Guest OS:

1. Launch VMware Fusion
2. Power on the Virtual Machine
3. Start the Windows VM.

Note: Please take a backup of the virtual machine before proceeding with the further steps.
Please refer to the articles below to take back up in Fusion and Workstation.

• To back up a virtual machine in Fusion
• To back up a virtual machine in Workstation

4. Manually delete VMware Tools installation files under these locations:

C:\Program Files\VMware
C:\Program Files\Common Files\VMware
C:\Program Data\VMware
C:\users\username\App data\VMware

Note: Please select your users and username in your machine while following the above step.
 

5. Start Regedit > HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\

Delete all VMware related drivers including vmci, vm3dmp, vmaudio, vmhgfs, vmmemctl, vmmouse, VMRawDisk, VMTools, vmusbmouse, vmvss, vmware physical disk helper services, VMwareCAF*.

6. Delete VMware.Inc from Regedit > HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\VMware.Inc
7. Delete the same driver under C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\
8. Remove the VMware SVGA driver from Device Manager
9. Start Windows normally
10. Install VMware Tools

For more information, see: Installing VMware Tools in a Fusion virtual machine running Windows