VMware tools may requires additional reboot while installing from ESXi level

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• VMware Tools may require additional reboot while directly installed from ESXI level whenever Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable package needs to be updated
• After the VMware Tools installation, the user may see a timed message box prompting for a system restart. This message box will automatically time out after 30 seconds and trigger a reboot even if the user does not take any action, in accordance with the VMware Tools upgrader design.

 

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi

Cause

During the VMware Tools upgrade, if the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable package is updated, an additional system restart is required to complete the installation, as the update cannot be completed without rebooting.

After the VMware Tools installation, the user may see a timed message box prompting for a system restart. This message box will automatically time out after 30 seconds and trigger a reboot even if the user does not take any action, in accordance with the VMware Tools upgrader design.

Resolution

The Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable package update is required for the VMware Tools upgrade and cannot be completed without a system restart.

We may get a timed message box notifying the user of the pending reboot. This message box has a timeout of 30 seconds; if the user does not manually respond within that time, the system restart is automatically triggered regardless.

This can occasionally occur, if you are upgrading to a newer VMware Tools major revision that requires a newer version of VC++ runtime package than the installed version of Tools.(Tools components depend on this package of  Microsoft DLLs for functionality. )

Also, to avoid this we can download the latest version of VC++ Redistributable.The latest version is v14.44.35208.0 directly from Microsoft at:Latest supported Visual C++ Redistributable downloads | Microsoft Learn
Furthermore, it should able to be distributed to VMs in using the usual Microsoft tools.
Once the newest versions are installed then VMware Tools installation will not need to install the version supplied with it, and thus avoid the issue of an extra system restart.