VMWare Tools in Windows Server 2008 Core

Hi folks, if you have ever used VMWare before, then you will be familiar with the VMWare Tools. This is a set of tools you can install into a guest os in VMWare to allow better functionality with your virtual machine. However this is a graphical install and it isn’t exactly clear how to run VMWare Tools if you have installed Windows Server 2008 in Core mode in your virtual environment.

Just recently I ran into this problem while running some testing and was able to do it by choosing to install VMWare tools first and then changing drive letters to the d:. Then I ran the setup.exe file to start the VMWare Tools installer.

This started the VMWare Tools gui. However this throws a DLL error on the screen. Just go to task manager during the install and kill the rundll process. Then click past any errors and the install should finish without a hitch. I used the “typical” install mode.

Then reboot the virtual machine and when the server comes back up you should have a working guest os with Windows Server 2008 Core and VMWare Tools installed!

-RP