latest recommendation on vmware tools?

[Brad H 0]

I've found a few posts from over the years on whether to install vmware tools on a reference image (with workstation pro 15) when buildling the image or not (for deployment to a physical machine). 

I'm finding that without VMware tools, the Win10 reference image is really slow to deal with, difficult to navigate with a mouse, etc. So I'm curious, is it ok to install VMware tools and then uninstall them before shutting down to capture the image? Has it become better over the years of installing the Tools? 

Or any recommendations is very much appreciated!

Brad

 

[Jeff Harris 0]

You can install VMware Tools to work on the VM, but you do want to uninstall them before you capture. The problem is that sometimes VMware tools leaves things behind, and the Capture Wizard thinks they're still installed. I can put the RegKeys that we check for at the bottom of this post, but my recommendation would be to just leave them off, and RDP into your VM and perform your configurations that way. 

 

RegKeys;

Microsoft:  HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\{B0950C40-269A-11DD-BD0B-0800200C9A66}
Microsoft:  HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\{E799CA03-7E46-4AE7-A7B6-E904CCFD1529}
VMware:  HKLM\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\VMTools
VMware:  HKLM\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\VMwareTools
VMware:  HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\{FE2F6A2C-196E-4210-9C04-2B1BC21F07EF}
VMware:  HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\{96B74176-0BA4-4F5D-B3A5-466EAD9E73BD}
Oracle:  HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\Oracle VM VirtualBox Guest Additions

[Brad H 0]

Thanks Jeff, I saw your reply a few years ago saying the same thing, so I just wanted to check if anything has changed lately. We have SD and vmware workstation pro on a stand alone server and usually RDP to the server, then load the ref image in VMWare, but, as I said, it's just so dang slow to use. 

Thanks for the info!