As of 12/11/2020, VMware no longer signs Tools for Windows Vista with SHA-1, so you need Windows 7 SP1 or later to use the latest version.
However, you can use an older version of VMware Tools, which is here: https://media.githubusercontent.com/media/thepwrtank18/thepwrtank18/master/VMware%20Tools%20for%20Windows%207%20RTM%20and%20Vista.iso
Link is dead. Instead, here’s a full on guide.
Step 0: Foreword
This is an unsupported operating system, with unsupported drivers. Use this at your own risk.
Step 1: Preparation
You will need:
- Either a:
- x64 Windows Vista ISO
- x64 Windows Vista Disc + Reader
- VMware Workstation (Pro or Player) 15.x, or Pro 16.x and higher.
- An old version of the VMware Tools ISO (10.3.5 to be precise), from here
Step 2: Creation
Note: Do not let VMware scan your ISO or disc, Easy Install may use the wrong version of Windows, whether a wrong edition or architecture.
Make a VM. If you have Pro or Player 15.x, do what you normally do. If you have Pro 16.x, make sure compatibility is set to Workstation 15.x (in Custom settings). After that, customize the settings you want. (Player does not support custom settings, so you either need to get 15.x, which is what you need anyway, or Pro 16.x and higher.)
Step 3: Modification
Make sure you have your ISO or disc selected in the VM options. If there’s a floppy disc or extra DVD drive with «autoinst» or the like on it, remove that drive.
Step 4: Installation
Install as usual. When it tells you to create a user profile, don’t do that for now. Go to the VM settings, then put in the VMware Tools ISO you got earlier. Don’t install VMware Tools via VM>Install VMware Tools. After that, press Shift+F10 in the VM. Put in D:\setup64.exe.
Step 5: Initialization
Do the VMware Tools installation as usual. When it says if it wants to restart the machine, say «Yes», then go to VM>Power>Reset. When it reboots, do the setup as normal. Let it monitor your computer’s performance, as drivers are installed.
The version of VMware Tools that ships with Workstation Pro no longer supports Windows XP and Windows Vista virtual machines. They’re now legacy operating systems.
The good news is that you can still download and install a legacy version of VMware Tools and it’s easy to do.
So if you’re trying to setup an XP or Vista VM, then read on and I’ll show you how to do it.
- VMware Tools For Legacy Operating Systems.
- Mount The ISO File.
When trying to install VMware Tools on to a Windows XP or Windows Vista virtual machine, you’ll see this message popup.
“VMware Tools is no longer shipped with VMware Workstation for legacy guest operating systems”.
What you need to do is to click the link in the message popup to download the “Pre Vista” legacy Tools.
Download the VMware Tools ISO to your computer.
There Are Two Links In The Popup.
There are two links present in the popup. They’re very close together, so be careful to click the top link to start the download.
Mount The ISO File.
Once the legacy Tools has finished downloading, you’ll find that it’s in the ISO format. That makes it easy to simply mount the file in a virtual CD/DVD drive.
To install the Tools, boot up the virtual machine (XP or Vista). When it’s ready, click the VM button on the Workstation Pro toolbar. On the menu, click Settings.
On the Settings page, select CD/DVD (IDE) in the left hand pane. Then on the right hand pane, use the browse button to navigate to and select the legacy VMware Tools that you just downloaded.
When that’s done, click the OK button at the bottom of the page.
After a slight pause, you should see the Windows Installer start up, followed by the VMware Tools welcome screen.
Click the Next button to continue. Select Typical and click Next. Finally click the Install button.
When the Tools have finished installing, you’ll probably be required to reboot your virtual machine.
Summary.
It’s understandable that Broadcom has removed the legacy Tools from the standard Workstation Pro setup. It adds extra weight to the download and not that many people still use XP or Vista even as virtual machines.
But if you’re one of those people, then it’s still available for download. And installing it is much easier than perhaps you thought it would be.
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Sometimes decommissioning old system is not easy as it looks, as this has a lots of dependency on business as well as on end users. As Microsoft had already made the announcement few years back about the End of Support for Microsoft Windows Server 2003 as well as some other old traditional legacy EUC OS. Microsoft Product Life Cycle . As last few weeks back at one of my customer site we got to know that one of the machine they had recently migrated from physical to Virtual (VMware vSphere 6.7U1) and are facing trouble to install the VMware Tools. Later at the time of troubleshooting I found out the machine is Windows 2003 which they need to up and running for at least 2 quarters as they are coming up with new solution for that particular project. Once the migration was done from physical to virtual which was successful one for the support teams once they trying to install the VMware tools they were getting errors stating that ” The required VMware Tools ISO image does not exist or is inaccessible.”
Installing and Using VMware Tools. As VMware Tools is a suite of utilities that enhances the performance of the virtual machine’s guest operating system and improves management of the virtual machine. Although the guest operating system can run without VMware Tools, you would lose important functionality and convenience. Whenever I design or deploy/implement VMware solution I generally go through the release notes of the product which is very important at the time of every vSphere Major Release VMware announces the release of Latest VMware tools,
These Notes clear stats that there is no iso or packages has been released for Windows 2003 or earlier OS. The list of the OS which support these latest VMware tools are below.
Windows OS level prerequisites
- Windows Server 2016
- Windows 10
- Windows Server 2012 R2
- Windows 8.1
- Windows Server 2012
- Windows 8
- Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 (SP1)
- Windows 7 SP1
- Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 (SP2)
- Windows Vista SP2
- Windows Server 2012 R2 with Microsoft update KB2919355
- Windows 8.1 with Microsoft update KB2919355
But As we all know VMware tools comes with drivers and some other important metrics which will be helpful in future for troubleshooting and managing and planning the resources accordingly with the behavior of a virtual machine. As this newly migrated VM was running on vSphere 6.7 U1 and after several tries and getting the above mentioned error, I come up with an idea that lets install the Older Version of VMware tools which I downloaded from VMware, but that also resulted in a failure. After reading the release notes of vSphere 6.5 I found out that the VMware Tools Version 10.0.12 and after going through the release notes I found out that this contains a winprevista.iso “Bingo” here you go, I was fortunate enough that in one of my lab environment I was running vSphere 6.5U1 and now I need to extract the Winprevista.iso file from this host to my machine and need to extract using WinZip or 7Zip program. To get this file you can use the any SFTP client which works over port number 22, then you need to login to your host using root credentials and password, navigate to the location /usr/lib/vmware/isoimages/ and look for the desired mentioned image download it and extract it using the tools which you are comfortable with I used the 7zip program for this.
Now you will be thinking why I didn’t copied this iso file directly to the host where my newly migrated VM was residing, So when we install the VMware tools a mount has been initiated and to get the mount we need to have the supportive Windows 2003 CD ROM driver on that machine which we didn’t had, So now I had Copy all the content to a folder in my machine for that first I used the WinSCP client to copy that iso than mount it using the default mount options which we are getting in Windows 2012 Servers. Copy all the content to your local media or other NTFS drive.
As the machine neither had the CD ROM driver nor has the network connectivity, then I utilized the VMware Edit Virtual Machine Feature, for that.
Hope this have been informative for you. See you in the another blog post.
Published by sajag007
Experienced Delivery Lead with a demonstrated history of working in the IT industry. Strong operations professional skilled in IT Infrastructure Specially within Private Cloud Servers & Network Architecture, Engagement Management and Program Management.
View all posts by sajag007
In this article, we have shared the manual VMware Tools download links for Windows, Linux, or macOS guest operating systems that you have installed on your host computer using one of the VMware Workstations, VMware Fusion, or ESXi virtualization software.
How to Manually Download VMware Tools ISO/EXE for Windows, Linux, and macOS Virtual Machines
To increase the performance of the virtual machines you have installed on your host computer or to transfer files between the host and the VM, you need to install VMware Tools. Installing the drivers for the guest operating systems you have established with VMware Workstation, VMware Fusion, or vSphere ESXi enables features such as better mouse experience or fitting screen resolution to full screen.
To install the drivers for a Windows, Linux, or macOS guest operating system installed on the virtual machine, click VM / Install VMware Tools from the tool menu. You do not need to download this package because it is integrated into Workstation and Fusion programs.
What’s the Benefit of Installing Virtual Machine Tools?
- It fixes the low video resolution issues.
- It improves insufficient color depth.
- It fixes the issue where the network speed is displayed incorrectly.
- It improves restricted mouse movement.
- It enables copy-paste and drag-and-drop for files.
- It fixes the missing sound issue.
- It enables snapshots of the guest operating system to be taken.
- It synchronizes the clock on the guest operating system with the host.
- It installs the hardware drivers of the virtual machine.
- It allows you to use the virtual machine in full-screen mode.
Download for Windows Guest Operating Systems
It is possible to manually download VMware Tools to update or install the drivers of all Windows guest machines you have installed on your host computer using one of the virtualization software.
After visiting the web page containing the latest version of VM Tools tools by clicking the button below, you can manually download the 32-bit or 64-bit or ISO file to your computer according to the architectural platform of the system you have installed.
Download
Download for Linux Guest Operating Systems
The VMware company allowed the downloading of virtual machine drivers for Linux guest machines as tar.gz file extensions on its official website. However, the company has changed the decision to download this file for Linux systems, suggesting that it be followed on its GitHub page.
To install the drivers for Linux guest operating systems more efficiently, click Install VMware Tools from the tool menu of the virtualization software. However, installing VM Tools on Linux machines instead of Windows guest machines can be a bit difficult. Therefore, you can install the drivers for your Ubuntu virtual machine by visiting this article that will guide you.
You can manually download the tar.gz extension package to your computer after visiting the Open VMware Tools for Linux webpage, which is constantly updated on GitHub, by clicking the button below.
Download
VMware Tools (Darwin.iso) for macOS Guest Operating Systems
What is Darwin.iso?
Due to situations arising from Apple’s agreements with VMware, installing macOS systems using Workstation software on Windows platforms is not officially supported. However, installing the macOS operating system using VMware Fusion on a Mac computer is formally endorsed.
Therefore, the Darwin.iso file from Fusion software is needed to install drivers for macOS guest machines on Windows or other platforms.
After installing your macOS guest machine, you can install the integrated VMware tools in the virtualization software on your guest system. You don’t need to download VMware tools externally. Still, it is recommended that newer versions be installed as the Darwin.iso file is updated when newer Fusion software versions are released.
In addition, you can install the drivers of macOS guest machines on ESXi server virtualization platforms with the VMware Tools inside using the Darwin.iso file.
Download the Latest Darwin.iso for macOS
You can download the latest Darwin.iso 13.0.0 file published by Fusion in the folder we shared on Google Drive by clicking the button below.
Download
Conclusion
To summarize, you can increase the performance of your virtual machines thanks to VMware Tools. Therefore, you both improve the user experience and increase the functionality. Under normal circumstances, when you install a guest system, the video resolution will be problematic. But by downloading this tool, you can adjust display settings and enable things like file transfer as well.
In some cases, you fix the network experience of virtual machines. In short, you should get VMware Tools to maximize the capabilities of your virtual environment. As a result, keep in mind that you should always install the latest version of guest software.
TolgaBagci
Hi, I’m Tolga, a computer expert with 20 years of experience. I help fix computer issues with things like hardware, systems, networks, virtualization, servers, and operating systems. Check out my website for helpful info, and feel free to ask me anything. Keep yourself in the loop about the newest technologies!