Oct 27, 2011

Installation/Uninstallation of VMware Player Hangs

If you are like me, where the installation or uninstallation of VMware Player keeps hang/fail, then you are lucky here.

I used to install VMware Player and then I upgrade to VMware Workstation 7.1 (trial). After the trial expire, and I'm planning to uninstall VMware Workstation and keeps only VMware Player (which is free).

I tried multiple times, the uninstallation process keeps hang (forever). Then I try to download the latest copy of VMware Player, and wish I could install to override it. It doesn't work.


Then I tried to be a "good-boy" and follow the installation instruction (manual way) provided by VMware at the following URL:


Same thing happens. I even tried install the new copy using command line as below:
VMware-player-4.0.0-471780.exe /z "action"="install"
Still fails. :-(

Then I also tried extract the installation EXE to a temporary folder:
VMware-player-4.0.0-471780.exe /e tempdir
And then double click the MSI to install it. End up the same shit happens.


Finally, when I about to give up on VMware, I found 1 last thing to do before switching to VirtualBox.


  1. start regedit.exe
  2. Browse to the following sub-key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\Zones\
  3. You should see keys named 0, 1, 2, 3 and 4. In my case I had a folder named "L" before the 0.
  4. Remove the key with "L" (actually it is  "└", unicode #2514)

It works like a charm now.

P/s: This is due to Microsoft screws up the registry Internet Zone settings in the registry. With the "└" key, it cause Javascript not to be called from an application.