Installing VMware Player via MSI failed

Question

This error pops up every time (both VMware Player and Workstation) and never is able to install at all. I stopped installation after the temp file is created and ran the MSI file directly. It now fails on "hcmon driver unable to install". I posted this on the VMware forum, no help for 3 days now, I am stuck.

I extracted the setup and ran the msi, hcmon fails to install. I am on Windows 8 and user account is Administrator. I tried every solution there is with no progress at all. Some things I tried are

1. Renaming the setup to some name.
2. setup.exe /z "action"="install" Switch
3. verbose logging msi installation and found that it rollsback the installation after hcmon fails to install.
4. Checksum is validated.
5. Disabled AVG and ZoneAlarm.
6. Stopping the installation as soon as the desktop icon is created, and ran the player, the vmx fails to load.

I use the latest VMware player 5.1 and tried the previous ones.

On the other hand Virtualbox installed fine and no problem with it at all. Maybe is this conflicting? Unfortunately the Blackberry 10 simulator is a VMX file. No support for virtualbox. Any help?

Error log for the setup.exe, here's an excerpt:

MSI (s) (E8:C8) 
[01:00:22:709]: Note: 1: 1708  MSI (s) (E8:C8)
[01:00:22:725]: Product: VMware Player -- Installation failed. MSI (s) (E8:C8) 
[01:00:22:725]: Windows Installer installed the product.
Product Name: VMware Player. 
Product Version: 5.0.1. 
Product Language: 1033. 
Manufacturer: VMware, Inc.. 
Installation success or error status: 1603. MSI (s) (E8:C8) 
[01:00:22:756]: Deferring clean up of packages/files, if any exist MSI (s) (E8:C8) 
[01:00:22:756]: MainEngineThread is returning 1603 MSI (s) (E8:20) 
[01:00:22:756]: No System Restore sequence number for this installation. MSI (s) (E8:20)
[01:00:22:756]: User policy value 'DisableRollback' is 0 MSI (s) (E8:20) 
[01:00:22:756]: Machine policy value 'DisableRollback' is 0 MSI (s) (E8:20) 
[01:00:22:756]: Incrementing counter to disable shutdown. Counter after increment: 0 MSI (s) (E8:20) 
[01:00:22:756]: Note: 1: 1402 2: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\Rollback\Scripts
3: 2  MSI (s) (E8:20) 
[01:00:22:756]: Note: 1: 1402 2: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\Rollback\Scripts 3: 2  MSI (s) (E8:20) 
[01:00:22:756]: Decrementing counter to disable shutdown. If counter >= 0, shutdown will be denied.  Counter after decrement: -1 MSI (s) (E8:20) 
[01:00:22:772]: Destroying RemoteAPI object. MSI (s) (E8:B4) 
[01:00:22:772]: Custom Action Manager thread ending. MSI (c) (B0:74) 
[01:00:22:787]: Decrementing counter to disable shutdown. If counter >= 0, shutdown will be denied.  Counter after decrement: -1 MSI (c) (B0:74) 
[01:00:22:787]: MainEngineThread is returning 1603

Solution 1

I had the same problem, turns out that it was the hcmon driver. It was already installed, I tried to remove it and then it all worked like a charm.

Manually remove the hcmon.sys driver:

1. Right-click My Computer and click Manage.
2. Click Device Manager.
3. Click View > Show hidden devices.
4. Double-click Non-Plug and Play Drivers
5. Right-click hcmon and click Uninstall.
6. Delete the C:\Windows\system32\drivers\hcmon.sys file.
7. Restart the computer

Solution 2

Installing 6.0.1 failed on my system. Even unpacking the .exe wouldn't work. The 6.0.0 installer had the same problem, the installer seemed corrupt. Downloading it from a different location solved it.

Comments

[Ramhound]

There are free tools to convert VMX files to a file format that Virtual Box can use.

[Ramhound]

It just hit me. You likely have Hyper-V Enabled this is likely the reason your having problems installing VMWare.

[Eshwar]

Hyper-V is disabled yet problem persists. I'll go with the VMX convertor

[Pramod Tapaniya]

than also same problem is occur..Please help me fast.

[mlhDev]

I had uninstalled the player successfully first so there was no hcmon driver listed in the Device Manager (I'm assuming that's why), but renaming hcmon.sys to hcmon.sys.old did the trick.