Before you upgrade VMware Tools, consider the environment that the virtual machine runs in and weigh the benefits of different upgrade strategies. For example, you can install the latest version of VMware Tools to enhance the performance of the virtual machine's guest operating system and improve virtual machine management, or you can continue using the existing version to provide more flexibility and avoid downtime in your environment.

For Windows 2000 and later, VMware Tools installs a virtual machine upgrade helper tool. This tool restores the network configuration if you upgrade from virtual hardware version 4 to version 7 or later. In vSphere, virtual hardware version 4 corresponds to ESX/ESXi 3.5 compatibility. Virtual hardware version 7 corresponds to ESX/ESXi 4.x compatibility.

Power on the virtual machine.

Verify that the guest operating system is running.

Because the VMware Tools installer is written in Perl, verify that Perl is installed in the guest operating system.

Power on the virtual machine.

Log in to the guest operating system as an administrator.

In VMware Workstation Pro and Workstation Player, the windows.iso file is on the host in the directory where you installed Workstation Pro or Workstation Player.

If you plan to use MSI arguments to specify options regarding the silent installation, go to the Windows Installer page on the MSDN Web site to familiarize yourself with the syntax. You can use these arguments with the setup.exe command or place them in the vCenter Server dialog box for automatic installations and upgrades.

To prevent some VMware Tools components from being installed, familiarize yourself with the VMware Tools component names so that you can specify which components to exclude. See Names of VMware Tools Components Used in Silent Installations.

If you are installing VMware Tools from a beta or release candidate of a VMware product, suppress prompts about unsigned drivers. See Suppress Prompts About Unsigned Drivers on Windows Operating Systems Before... and Add VMware as a Trusted Publisher to Suppress Driver Prompts....

1

On the host, from the VMware Fusion menu bar, select Virtual Machine > Install VMware Tools.

If an earlier version of VMware Tools is installed, the menu item is Update VMware Tools.

2

In the virtual machine, log in to the guest operating system as root and open a terminal window.

3

Change to a working directory, for example, /tmp.

cd /tmp

4

Run the installer and configure VMware Tools.

cd vmware-tools-distrib
./vmware-install.pl

Usually, the vmware-config-tools.pl configuration file runs after the installer file finishes running.

5

Follow the prompts to accept the default values, if appropriate for your configuration.

6

Follow the instructions at the end of the script.

Depending on the features you use, these instructions can include restarting the X session, restarting networking, logging in again, and starting the VMware User process. You can alternatively reboot the guest operating system to accomplish all these tasks.

If a new virtual hardware version is available for the virtual machine, upgrade the virtual hardware.