Knowledge Base

Occasionally, VMware Tools in the guest operating system may fail to start after you choose Settings>VMware Tools Install or click the message at the bottom of the virtual machine window. This may occur if the autorun feature is disabled in your Windows guest operating system. Some Linux guests do not have an autorun or automount feature, so you must manually install the tools after mounting the correct ISO for your guest. This information is included in the following steps.

To manually start the VMware Tools Installer:

1. Choose Settings>Cancel VMware Tools Install.
2. Choose Settings>VMware Tools Install, then click the Install button in the dialog box that appears. The installer should start installing VMware Tools on the Windows guest. On a Linux guest, this procedure mounts the ISO. To manually mount the ISO, see step 4.
3. If the installer still does not start on a Windows guest operating system:
   1. From the Windows guest's Start menu, choose Run.
   2. Enter D:\setup.exe where D: is the first CD-ROM drive configured for your virtual machine.
   3. Click OK to start installing VMware Tools.
4. If you are working with a Linux guest, make sure that the ISO that contains the VMware Tools installation package is correctly connected. If you are still having trouble with a Windows guest, also follow these steps, then re-try the previous step 3.
   1. Start the virtual machine.
   2. From the VM menu, choose Removable Devices > CD-ROM (IDE 1:0) > Edit.
   3. Under Device Status, select Connected.
   4. Select Use ISO image.
   5. Click Browse.
   6. Browse to
      • C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Workstation\ for a Windows host
      • /usr/lib/vmware/isoimages for a Linux host
   7. Select the ISO that matches your guest operating system.
   8. Click Open or OK.
   9. Click OK.
5. The installer does not automatically start on a Linux guest operating system. Follow these steps to install VMware Tools on a Linux guest:
   1. Log on to the virtual machine as root.
   2. Mount the ISO as a CD-ROM:
      mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom
   3. You should now see a tarball for the tools under the CD-ROM directory:
      ls /mnt/cdrom/
   4. If you see an RPM listed, install it:
      rpm -i /mnt/cdrom/VMwareTools-.i386.rpm
   5. If you don't already see an uncompressed RPM or script, unpack the compressed tarball that holds the installation script:
      cd /tmp
      tar zxf /mnt/vmware-linux-tools.tar.gz or
      tar zxf /mnt/cdrom/VMwareTools-.i386.tar.gz
   6. Unmount the tools image from the CD-ROM device:
      umount /mnt/cdrom
   7. If you unpacked vmware-linux-tools.tar.gz, you also need to run the VMware Tools installer:
      cd /vmware-tools-distrib
      ./vmware-install.pl
   8. Log out of the root account.
   9. To see the VMware Toolbox, launch an X terminal (startx if required) and type vmware-toolbox.