Uninstalling and manually installing VMware Tools in VMware Fusion

Products

• VMware Desktop Hypervisor

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• After upgrading VMware Fusion, the VMware Tools installer does not launch automatically when Windows boots
• The VMware Tools installer fails to launch even after you click Install VMware Tools in the Virtual Machine menu
• VMware Tools does not install correctly
• You see the error:
  
  VMware Tools is out of date.

Environment

VMware Fusion Pro 8.x
VMware Fusion Pro 11.x
VMware Fusion 5.x
VMware Fusion 1.x
VMware Fusion 8.x
VMware Fusion 6.x
VMware Fusion Pro 10.x
VMware Fusion 4.x
VMware Fusion 3.x
VMware Fusion 2.x
VMware Fusion 11.x
VMware Fusion 10.x
VMware Fusion 7.x

Resolution

On occasion, you may have to uninstall and reinstall VMware Tools.
 

Uninstalling VMware Tools

To uninstall VMware Tools in Windows XP:

1. Click Start > Control Panel.
2. Open Add/Remove Programs.
3. From the list of installed software, select VMware Tools.
4. Click Remove.
5. When prompted, click Yes to restart Windows.
6. After the Window restarts, open My Computer and navigate to C:\Program Files and remove the VMware folder if it exists.

To uninstall VMware Tools in Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 10:

1. Open Control Panel.
    
   • For Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8: Click Start > Control Panel.
   • For Windows 10: Click Start > Settings, type Control Panel in the search box on the top.
      
2. Click Programs and Features.
3. From the list of installed software, select VMware Tools.
4. Click Uninstall.
5. When prompted, click Yes to restart Windows.

To uninstall VMware Tools in a Linux guest operating system:

1. Open a terminal window.
2. Switch to the root user by running the command:
   
   su - root
    
3. Run the VMware Tools uninstaller script:
   
   /usr/bin/vmware-uninstall-tools.pl
    
4. Follow the onscreen instructions to complete the uninstall.
5. Reboot the virtual machine.

For information on uninstalling VMware Tools on a Mac OS guest, see Manually uninstalling VMware Tools in a Mac OS guest
 

Installing VMware Tools

Linux

For instructions on manually installing VMware Tools in a Linux guest, see:

Installing VMware Tools in a Linux virtual machine using Red Hat Package Manager (RPM)
Installing VMware Tools in a Linux virtual machine using a Compiler
Installing VMware Tools in an Ubuntu virtual machine

Mac OS

For instructions on manually installing VMware Tools in a Mac OS guest, see Installing VMware Tools in a Mac OS Guest

Note: If your issue persists even after uninstalling VMware Tools, see Cleaning up after an incomplete uninstallation on a Windows host (1308).

Additional Information

For related information, see:

• Troubleshooting a failed VMware Tools installation in Fusion
• Installing VMware Workstation or VMware Tools fails with the error: 1327 or 1606