Installling VMware Player 4.0.3 fails

Question

I'm running Windows 7 64-bit and I'm trying install VMware Player 4.0.3.

I get an error:

The MSI 'C:\users.....\Local\Temp\vmware_1338456060\vmwarevmcisockets64.msi' failed.

I had installed this previously, and had to uninstall the application. This attempt was a re-install.

Solution 1

Documenting VMware Player 4.0.2 Install on a Windows 7 64-bit Host OS

Hurdle #1 Getting the installer to work:

• Create folder C:\Temp if it doesn't already exist. Delete everything in there and put the self-extracting executable in it. In my case the file is called VMware-player-4.0.2-591240.exe. Open up your command prompt (Start->Run->cmd.exe) and then navigate to the folder where the .exe file is located by typing cd C:\Temp. Then type this C:\Temp>VMware-player-4.0.2-591240.exe /e
• Download InstEdit (trust me you will need it because some shmuck at VMware didn't test their installation packages throughly)
• Start the installation by running C:\Temp\VMware-player-4.0.2-591240.exe. This creates a folder inside C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Temp\vmware_%random_number%. (In my case this is where installation stopped prematurely) copy this folder \vmware_%random_number% into C:\Temp\ folder.
• If you are getting "Error 2732. Directory Manager not initialized" message when you try to start the player then follow instructions here. Instructions are a little hard to follow but you will get through it eventually. Running msiexec with /qn option [/q Sets User Interface level /n Sets it to None] was what did it for me so don't mess with these options. Player will "quietly" install and you won't even know it's there until you check your Start menu.

Hurdle #2 Getting VMPlayer to run the ISO image:

Of Course it didn't end there!!! There was one other error I was getting when I tried to install CentOS_64-bit from an ISO image. This error below:

Could not get vmci driver version: The handle is invalid. You have an incorrect version of driver "vmci.sys". Try reinstalling VMware Workstation. Module DevicePowerOn power on failed.

• First you have to download the proper "vmci.sys" driver file. See this link for a mini walk through on how to do that. If you're on a 64bit machine make sure to copy vmci.sys file into your C:\Program Files(x86)\VMware Player folder as well as C:\Windows\System32\drivers
• Again if you're on a 64-bit machine then open up your .vmx file and change this setting vmci0.present = false.

This sums up 4 Hours of my life I will never get back, but now I have a VMware Player up and running on my Windows 7 64bit system. Hope this helps...

PS: If and when you get a notification from VMWare player to update/upgrade to a newer version you will not be able to do so because the installation/upgrade package is still broken. Possibly uninstalling the current version and reinstalling using the new file following the steps from above might help you resolve the issue.

Solution 2

Try this, and do not forget to create a restore point before following the steps ahead.

1. Open regedit.
2. Click on Find which may be a submenu of Edit.
3. Search for VMware, delete all the registry entries for VMware.
4. Delete temp/%temp/prefetch data.
5. Try reinstalling.

Comments

[Jaanus]

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