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Cleaning up a messy VMware installation

gebhard

If you get stuck with a VMware installlation (Windows) somewhere between good and evil (e.g. the installer crashed during installation but before registering the uninstall information, and a new install run complains about an incomplete installation) here’s a knowledge base post by VMware which might help:

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1308

The following worked for me:

  • <Install-Binary> /c (for <7) or <Install-Binary> /clean (for >= 7)
  • section “manually cleaning the registry”
  • delete program folder
  • delete data application folder
  • delete files in Windows directories (note: it’s VMNetDHCP.dll, not VMNetDHCP.exe)

Note: the cleanup tool didn’t work for me – the tool started, consumed one CPU but did nothing visible (no time for an investigation).