Installing, upgrading, or uninstalling VMware Tools in Windows Guest OS fails

Products

• VMware Desktop Hypervisor
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• Unable to uninstall VMware tools
• Upgrading/Installing the VMware tools or uninstallation of VMware Tools sometimes fails with the following errors:
  
  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
VGAuthservice and Alias Manager cannot be installed
A network error occurred while attempting to read from the file C:\Windows\Installer\VMware Tools.msi
VMware Tools Wizard ended prematurely


Environment

• vSphere ESXi 6.7
• vSphere ESXi 7.x
• vSphere ESXi 8.x

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 perform a clean uninstall of VMware Tools in Windows Guest OS:

1. Power on the Virtual Machine
2. Start the Windows VM.
   
   Note: Take a backup or snapshot of the virtual machine before proceeding with the further steps. 
   • Managing snapshots in vSphere Web Client
     
   • To back up a virtual machine in Fusion
   • To back up a virtual machine in Workstation
     
     
3. Manually delete VMware Tools installation files under these locations. Note: Select the appropriate user and username in the machine in the path.
   • C:\Program Files\VMware
   • C:\Program Files\Common Files\VMware
   • C:\Program Data\VMware
   • C:\users\username\App data\VMware
4. 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: Install VMware Tools in VMware products