Monday, April 28, 2014

VMware Tools may not install on a Windows guest OS

1) KB 1012693

My personal experience was on a Server 2003 VM (Terminal Server).  Trying to automatically update VMware Tools caused the uninstall to run but the new version never installed.  Manually running setup from the CD drive caused the installer to "hang" on "configuring VMware Tools" and then timing out after about 30 minutes claiming the Windows Installer is no longer responding.  

After speaking to VMware support, we connected to the ESXi shell and saw nothing wrong with the ISO mounting during the tools install.  There were also no issue in the VMware Tools log on the VM itself.  It just simply was not running the install all the way through.

After cancelling that and rebooting we check that there were no VMware Tools services or any Registry Keys (KB 1001354, referenced above).  I then initiated another VMware Tools install and opened a command prompt and ran setup /r.  This threw an error stating there were no VMware Tools on the system.
I then ran setup /r.  This Worked.  

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

A Previous installation of VMware Tools has been detected

When trying to install VMware Tools on Debian Linux, I received the error that a previous installation was detected.  The solution is to remove the locations file which can be found at /etc/vmware-tools/ and then try reinstalling.

VMware Knowledge Base 1013159

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Windows 7 UAC Prompts and Network Printers

If you deploy or install network printers to Windows 7 workstations, and there is a change in the driver on the server, standard user(s) accounts will not be able print or update the print driver, and will be presented with a UAC prompt.

The solution is to create a GPO in your environment called Point and Print Restrictions.  It can be found under: Computer Configuration\Policies\Administrative Templates\Printers : Point and Print Restrictions

DO NOT USE THE ONE UNDER USER CONFIGURATION as it will be ignored on Windows 7.

You need to specify which servers users can print to and whether to present them with a warning or UAC Prompt.

Full instructions can be found here: