Overview of VMware Tools

VMware Tools is a suite of utilities that enhances the performance of the virtual machine's guest operating system. It also helps you to efficiently manage virtual machines.

Installing VMware Tools eliminates or improves these issues:

• Low video resolution
• Inadequate color depth
• Incorrect display of network speed
• Restricted movement of the mouse
• Inability to copy and paste and drag-and-drop files
• Missing sound

VMware Tools includes these components:

• VMware Tools service
• VMware device drivers
• VMware user process
• VMware Tools control panel
• Thin Print printing services

VMware Tools is included in the VMware Fusion installation. It is an .iso file (a CD image, or virtual CD), and Fusion comes with a different .iso file for each type of supported guest operating system, such as Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and Solaris.

For a list of supported operating systems, see the Compatibility Guide or the Release Notes for your version of VMware Fusion.

Installing VMware Tools

When virtual machines are created using Easy Install, VMware Tools is automatically installed during the first successful boot of the virtual machine.

For virtual machines that are not created using Easy Install, you must manually install VMware Tools by navigating to Virtual Machine > Install VMware Tools.

For information on installing VMware Tools in a Windows virtual machine, see Installing VMware Tools in a Fusion virtual machine running Windows (1003417).

For information on installing VMware Tools in a virtual machine running Linux, see:

• Installing VMware Tools in an Ubuntu virtual machine (1022525)
• Installing VMware Tools in a Linux virtual machine using Red Hat Package Manager (RPM) (1018392)
• Installing VMware Tools in a Linux virtual machine using a Compiler (1018414)

For information on installing VMware Tools in a virtual machine running Mac OS, see Installing VMware Tools in a Mac OS Guest (1032440).