Install VMware Tools Greyed Out: How to Fix It

Apr 25, 2019

Updated • Nov 8, 2026

Windows Software

"Install VMware Tools" is greyed out when VMware cannot mount the Tools installer into the guest. The usual causes: the virtual machine is powered off, it has no connected virtual CD/DVD drive, the drive is busy with another ISO, an installer is already mounted, or the guest is Linux with open-vm-tools managed by the OS. Fix the drive (remove it, add a new CD/DVD drive set to Auto detect) and the menu item returns.

This guide explains each cause, gives the fix for VMware Workstation, Fusion and vSphere, and shows how to install VMware Tools manually from the ISO when the menu still refuses to work.

Windows virtual machine in VMware Workstation Player with the Install VMware Tools menu item greyed out

Why is Install VMware Tools greyed out?

Install VMware Tools is greyed out because the option only works when VMware can attach the Tools ISO to a connected virtual CD/DVD drive in a running guest. If any part of that chain is missing, the menu item is disabled. Check these causes in order:

The VM is powered off or still booting. The installer is mounted into a running guest, so start the VM and wait for the desktop before opening the menu.
No virtual CD/DVD drive. VMs created without an optical drive, or with the drive removed, cannot receive the installer.
The CD/DVD drive is disconnected. Broadcom lists a disconnected CD/DVD device as the cause in vSphere; the same applies in Workstation.
The drive is still pointing at the setup ISO. After installing Windows or Linux from an ISO, for example one fetched with the Windows and Office ISO downloader, the drive can stay locked to that image.
An installer is already mounted. The menu then shows Cancel VMware Tools Installation instead.
Linux guest with open-vm-tools. When the distribution manages open-vm-tools, VMware expects you to update through the package manager.
Old guest operating system. Recent Workstation releases no longer bundle the legacy Tools ISOs, and the guest shows the message "VMware Tools is no longer shipped with VMware Workstation for this guest operating system".

How to fix Install VMware Tools greyed out in VMware Workstation

The reliable fix in VMware Workstation is to replace the virtual CD/DVD drive with a fresh one set to Auto detect, so VMware can mount its own ISO. Removing the floppy drive helps on VMs that were created with one. The steps match Workstation Pro and the older Workstation Player:

Shut down the guest operating system completely (not suspend).
In the VMware library, right-click the VM and select Settings.
On the Hardware tab, select CD/DVD and click Remove.
If a Floppy device is listed, select it and click Remove as well.
Click Add, choose CD/DVD Drive and click Finish. Make sure Connect at power on is checked and the connection is set to Use physical drive: Auto detect.
Click OK and start the VM.
Once the guest desktop has loaded, select Install VMware Tools from the virtual machine menu in the Workstation menu bar (in the older Workstation Player it sits under Player > Manage, as the screenshot below shows).

The same steps work for "Reinstall VMware Tools" and "Upgrade VMware Tools" when those items are greyed out. Workstation Player was discontinued in May 2024, when Workstation Pro became free for personal use, so current installs no longer have the Player menu.

Install VMware Tools available again in the Manage menu after replacing the virtual CD/DVD drive

Install VMware Tools greyed out in vSphere and Fusion

In vSphere, Install VMware Tools is greyed out most often because the VM's CD/DVD drive is disconnected. Edit the VM settings, tick the Connected checkbox on the CD/DVD drive, and the action under Guest OS becomes available again, according to Broadcom's knowledge base.

Broadcom also lists cases where a greyed-out Tools action is expected rather than broken (KB 301292):

Upgrade is only offered when a newer Tools version is available, so a current install shows the action disabled.
Guests where open-vm-tools is managed by the operating system are updated by the guest, not by vCenter.
If none of this applies, restart the VM and check again.

VMware Fusion on the Mac follows the same logic as Workstation: the Install VMware Tools item, which Broadcom says usually sits in the Virtual Machine or Guest OS menu of VMware products, needs a running guest and a connected CD/DVD drive. Shut down the VM, open its settings, add or reconnect the CD/DVD drive, then try again.

Virtual machine settings showing the CD/DVD drive locked to the Windows setup ISO

How to install VMware Tools manually from the ISO

If the menu stays greyed out, install VMware Tools manually by downloading the Tools ISO and running its setup inside the guest. This also works for Windows guests whose Tools are no longer bundled with Workstation. If you are still choosing a hypervisor, our comparison of virtual machine apps covers the alternatives.

Start the Windows VM and open Broadcom's VMware Tools download page in its browser. The portal may ask you to sign in with a Broadcom account.
Pick the release that supports your guest (see the version table below) and download its Windows ISO.
In File Explorer, double-click the ISO to mount it as a virtual drive.
Run the setup program from the mounted drive and choose the Typical setup.
Restart the VM when the installer asks you to.

Since VMware Tools 12.5.0, the Tools ISO supports only 64-bit Windows, and Broadcom names 12.4.x as the last compatible line for 32-bit Windows guests, so a 32-bit VM needs a 12.4 release. Broadcom's VMware Tools release notes list the current version and download options. You can also mount the downloaded ISO in the VM's CD/DVD settings from the host instead of downloading inside the guest.

VMware Tools on Linux guests: use open-vm-tools

On Linux guests, VMware recommends open-vm-tools from the distribution's repository instead of the Install VMware Tools menu. Most current distributions install it automatically during setup, which is also why the menu item can be disabled. The open-vm-tools project ships two packages: open-vm-tools for the core services and the optional open-vm-tools-desktop, which adds the pieces a graphical desktop guest needs.

On Ubuntu and Debian, install both with:

sudo apt install open-vm-tools open-vm-tools-desktop

On other distributions, install the same two packages with the distribution's own package manager. Reboot the guest afterwards. Updates then arrive with regular system updates.

Which VMware Tools version works on Windows 7 and older guests?

With Microsoft's update KB4474419 (SHA-2 support) installed, Broadcom lists Windows 7 SP1 as compatible with VMware Tools 10.1.0 or later; without it, 11.0.6 is the last compatible release. Broadcom's VMware Tools compatibility table lists the caps for older guests:

Guest operating system	Last compatible VMware Tools
Windows 7 SP1 / Server 2008 R2 SP1 without KB4474419	11.0.6
Windows Vista SP2 / Server 2008 SP2	11.0.6
Windows XP, Server 2003, Windows 2000	10.0.12 (winPreVista.iso)
32-bit Windows guests	12.4.x

Download the matching version from the release repository and install it with the manual steps above.

FAQ

Do I need VMware Tools in a virtual machine?

The guest runs without it, but VMware Tools adds the display and mouse drivers, automatic screen resizing, shared folders, copy and paste between host and guest, and time sync. It is worth installing in every VM you use regularly.

Why does the menu show Cancel VMware Tools Installation?

The Tools ISO is already mounted in the guest. Open the CD/DVD drive inside the guest and run setup from there, or cancel the installation to unmount it and start again.

Is VMware Workstation still free?

Yes. Workstation Pro became free for personal use in May 2024 and free for all users, including commercial use, in November 2024. Workstation Player was discontinued in May 2024, when the personal-use change arrived.

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Comments

Taha said on October 3, 2025 at 5:38 am


This really helped me, thank you!
Guy M said on May 19, 2025 at 3:04 am


Thanks. I watched a video on YouTube which claimed to fix this problem and while a lot of people swore it worked it did not work in my case. This finally did the trick. Thanks for posting this and you should put it on YouTube.
kleber said on January 23, 2025 at 9:56 pm


Thanks a lot for share the solution.
broduer said on October 19, 2024 at 2:25 am


You’ll want to navigate to : https://packages.vmware.com/tools/releases/ and find your needed tool release :) They moved things around
A normal student said on October 4, 2024 at 5:01 am


thanks a lot for your help.
nonya said on April 19, 2024 at 1:53 am


Thank you!!!!!!

This reminds me of the internet in the 90s before everyone was trying to make a buck.
Anonymous said on March 22, 2024 at 5:51 am


I followed these instructions exactly as describe. They worked for me. Thank you. :)
Juvenal said on January 19, 2024 at 1:22 pm


Awsome. Worked perfect to me
Andreas B. said on December 13, 2023 at 4:18 pm


Great, Removing and adding again worked fpr me.
Chris Whitehead said on August 4, 2023 at 3:16 pm


Thanks man! This one had me scracthing my head for a while, but your walk through worked a treat!.

Much Kudos for sharing!
Anonymous said on June 24, 2023 at 10:30 am


Thanks, this worked!
Anthony La Rosa said on March 8, 2023 at 11:57 pm


Excelente, me ayudó bastante y funcionó a la primera. Gracias!
Echo64 said on February 6, 2023 at 12:16 am


Thanks, this worked perfectly!
Frederik said on January 5, 2023 at 11:31 pm


Fantastic. Stupid VMware forum nothing to be found… The d*mn old floppy needs to GO! Great.
On VirtualBox: it runs reasonably well and of course really free but not as nice as VMWare. And DON’T run vmwares with Virtualbox, for instance XP vms get corrupted. Works as Designed I’m told. Stop bashing Virtualbox I’m told. Yeah yeah.
Anonymous said on November 6, 2022 at 12:25 pm


Thank you Ashwin. I am very grateful
Kevin Bedward said on October 28, 2022 at 1:33 pm


A solution that actually works! wow. Thanks Ashwin
gzrgz said on October 13, 2022 at 12:08 pm


thx a lot, solved it for me.
El said on May 5, 2022 at 5:52 pm


Two and a half years after the original post and this is still resolving the problem. Thanks, I was glad to find this!
TerreJim said on April 12, 2022 at 2:31 am


I was very frustrated and not finding the right ‘this is the fix’…until yours. Thanks and VM-on!
Arnold Murray said on March 12, 2022 at 12:09 am


Thank you for the help. That did the trick.
Joel Martin said on March 2, 2022 at 3:19 pm


Worked Perfect! I’m 50 and I’m trying to remember how we did things before the internet. I guess we spent a lot of time on the landline talking to tech support.
Mike Pancerny said on January 7, 2022 at 11:29 pm


I’ve tried this but I cannot load the virtual machine, it is Windows 7 and that appears greyed out in the list when I try to load it. Any suggestions please?
Anonymous said on January 7, 2022 at 5:09 pm


thank you!
Jorge J Rodriguez said on December 13, 2021 at 7:46 pm


Thanks for the tip! It helped my issue. I have Windows 7 VM
Sandra B said on November 4, 2021 at 7:00 am


Thank you so much for this. It worked perfectly. I am using VMware Player and although my CD/DVD settings looked as they should (did not show an iso file), my “Install Tools” button was still grayed out. I used your method and when I restarted Player, I was able to easily install Tools. Now I can copy/paste between virtual machine and host.
luan said on October 13, 2021 at 5:26 am


thank you so much
Lindsay Mathieson said on August 25, 2021 at 6:51 am


Thanks! did the trick.
Anonymous said on August 17, 2021 at 12:09 pm


Problem solved. Thanks a lot
Anonymous said on August 7, 2021 at 9:10 pm


Great, working fine..
Thanks for the tip.
bain McKay said on August 5, 2021 at 2:13 pm


I work with Windows 10 and Ubuntu VMs. I flip between them on a Mac Pro. Even though I was in a Windows VM, the CD was pointing to Ubuntu. So in Settings, set the CD to AutoDetect. On boot, it will detect Windows.iso and it will work.
Anonymous said on June 21, 2021 at 3:40 pm


I had found out the removal of the CD allright to kick out the windows but that didnt help. removal of the floppy though did the trick. Great!! (and what a suckers at VMware).
On virtualbox: Vbox corrupts XP vmdks so stay away from Vbox for existing VMware XOP images.
Anonymous said on June 10, 2021 at 5:17 am


it works. thank you ! – maxzinks
Anonymous said on May 22, 2021 at 7:45 am


Thanks really helped mate
Robert said on May 6, 2021 at 2:43 am


Thank you sir. You are the bomb diggity bomb.
NemmyBoy said on May 1, 2021 at 11:55 pm


Thank you. How hard they want it to make.
chatt said on April 25, 2021 at 6:07 pm


Okay so on mac I was trying to create a win 7 vm machine using vmware fusion on MacOS obviously.Â

I had the same issue and what I did was I disabled cd/dvdÂ and restarted the machine, this re-enabled “install vmware tools”.

How to disable

Open the specific vm screen > go into theÂ virtual machine drop down > settings >Â then underÂ “Removable Devices” click on CD/DVD (SATA) >Â UncheckÂ “Connect CD/DVD drive”.

This should re-enableÂ theÂ Â “install vmware tools”. Thanks
Phill Hardstaff said on April 9, 2021 at 10:47 am


thanks, worked for me, excellent ! Bula from Fiji
Anonymous said on March 24, 2021 at 4:27 pm


Thank you
little said on March 14, 2021 at 1:46 pm


Thank you very much! It’s been driving me nut.
peter said on March 1, 2021 at 4:14 pm


works! thanks
pony said on February 17, 2021 at 7:36 am


wow thx
Anonymous said on February 16, 2021 at 9:55 pm


Massive thanks ! I have spent hours trying to get VMWareTools installed.

I must say that I think that the effort required to install is ridiculous. I could not find any decent information on the web explaining how to install the tools (the method is completely obscure), or even how to verify they were installed. This is by fare the worst thing about VMWare.
Anonymous said on February 15, 2021 at 8:49 pm


thanks a lot
Pat Jojo said on February 8, 2021 at 9:41 am


Thak you very much. This really works! Saved me hours of frustration.
swarfega said on January 24, 2021 at 11:58 am


Thanks a lot, got it working by following your guide.
Anil said on December 12, 2020 at 6:51 pm


Thanks sir, I was worried.
It worked like charm so I couldn’t stop myself to comment ðŸ˜Š
1. Romolo said on January 15, 2021 at 8:55 am
  
  
  Same here , lot of thanks u just saved my day :-)
DrFranco said on December 7, 2020 at 6:04 pm


Thank you very much. Worked perfectly for my installation of a Windows 7 VM under VMware 16.1 (Windows).
Samrat Laha said on December 2, 2020 at 1:03 pm


I had the same problem in Vmware Workstation pro 16. The guest os being windows 7 x32 bit. Tried all the above methods. They didnot work. Then after much research found this page:

https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/downloads/info/slug/datacenter_cloud_infrastructure/vmware_tools/11_x

Registered my name and downloaded vmware tools separately. Details

VMware Tools packages for Windows
File size: 125.33 MB
File type: zip

Name: VMware-Tools-windows-11.2.0-16938113.zip
Release Date: 2020-10-15
Build Number: 16938113
VMware Tools packages for Windows
VMware Tools packages for Windows. These packages support the following operating systems: Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1) or Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 (SP1) and later
MD5SUM: 409742dfcd24bee8798e7596430fd259
SHA1SUM: e257e07a9e2899f882cf3dde30acbe8e195982f5
SHA256SUM: 3659f65af38d704914bb566d790043678275c694d87b4fc8fb485a2a164cd952

Extracted the *.iso file. Mounted the *.iso file to cd/dvd drive in the vmware console. The vmware tools exe was seen inside the guest os and installation was as usual.

P.S.: Sometimes software companies try to test whether their end users are intelligent or not by making their lives miserable and sending them in wild goose chase. I think it was one such attempt. Worst of all it worked.
Anonymous said on November 19, 2020 at 2:19 pm


You Sir, are a legend
lol said on November 18, 2020 at 4:30 pm


It works!
Anonymous said on November 15, 2020 at 7:43 am


It works perfectly for fusion
Matt said on November 13, 2020 at 12:12 pm


Worked a treat, thanks for posting
Anonymous said on November 1, 2020 at 11:57 pm


thanks

it works perfect

Really, Thank you sooooo much
Anonymous said on October 31, 2020 at 6:21 am


Worked for me! Many thanks !!
matin said on October 15, 2020 at 5:29 pm


this fantastic even the vendor has no solution
Anonymous said on September 25, 2020 at 3:15 am


GOD! Thanks!
Milind said on September 14, 2020 at 8:35 am


Thanks a lot! Enabling CD-ROM totally missed out of my mind. And I struggled a lot for accessing shared drive inside guest. Now it is working after enabling CD-ROM and installing VMWare tools.
Anonymous said on August 16, 2020 at 4:40 pm


Thanks!
Anonymous said on August 11, 2020 at 2:56 pm


Thanks, this worked perfectly
Tilman said on July 19, 2020 at 10:41 am


Thank you so much for your guide! Now it work.
Glenn said on July 18, 2020 at 7:58 pm


worked first time! thanks again
Tony Firshman said on July 10, 2020 at 12:35 pm


I have an OS X Mavericks (10.9.5) VM under VMware Fusion 11.5.5 under MacOS Catalina 10.5.5
on a 2019 16″ Macbook Pro.

Unity is greyed out.
Of course I have tried uninstalling/installing VMware Tools. Looking at the installation logs there were no
issues, and all files are there in /Library/Application Support/VMware Tools/
The two symlinks are also fine:
ln -s ‘/Library/Application Support/VMware Tools/mount_vmhgfs’ /sbin/
ln -s ‘/Library/Application Support/VMware Tools/mount_vmhgfs’ /Library/Filesystems/vmhgfs.fs/Contents/Resources/

I have even removed and re-installed ‘VMware Fusion’.

This has, so far, defeated VMware support. Mind you they didn’t realise
‘Library/Application Support/VMware Tools/’ was root and not the user,
so I am not sure she knows enough!
Ahme Dewidar said on July 10, 2020 at 2:45 am


Thanks bro, i was really about to give up
Matt Foster said on June 23, 2020 at 5:15 pm


Thank you – exactly what I needed!
santhosh said on June 7, 2020 at 11:54 pm


Thank you … the steps mentioned here work as is…
AnÃbal said on May 22, 2020 at 12:33 am


THANK YOU SO MUCH!
Anonymous said on May 15, 2020 at 4:44 pm


This works very well!
Anonymous said on May 9, 2020 at 4:20 am


Thanks a lot, I spent hours tying to find a fix.
Anonymous said on April 25, 2020 at 6:38 pm


This really helped a lot. Thanks!
BDR said on April 16, 2020 at 4:22 am


Thank you very much! Followed your instructions to a tee to remove the CD/DVD and Floppy drives on my Windows 7 VM. Much appreciated!
Anonymous said on April 10, 2020 at 9:12 am


Removing the floppy disk did it for me, thanks!
Tigs1112 said on April 6, 2020 at 9:51 pm


It saved me so much time instead of reinstalling the entire VM.
Bruno said on April 6, 2020 at 2:22 pm


I have tried the Removing the CD solution , it will work if you add a CDRom drive again.
if there is no CDROM you can’t install the tools
Anonymous said on April 4, 2020 at 1:48 pm


Thanks a million!
Bartek said on March 24, 2020 at 12:41 pm


Thank, Ten seconds to find your tips and five sends to fix my issue.
zxc said on March 14, 2020 at 5:28 pm


thanks
Anonymous said on March 6, 2020 at 7:55 pm


Appreciate it. It was useful.
Daniel said on February 16, 2020 at 6:06 pm


May cause an issue with the IDE device configured as a slave. See, for solution:
https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2010477
Anonymous said on February 10, 2020 at 2:01 pm


Thank you so much – really helped me out of a problem
Anonymous said on January 30, 2020 at 8:02 am


This procedure really helped me.
1. Anonymous said on November 29, 2020 at 10:16 pm
  
  
  It worked! Best solution
Anonymous said on January 22, 2020 at 10:09 pm


Thank you so much. You saved my time!
Anonymous said on January 22, 2020 at 12:03 am


thanks. Worked instantly
Anonymous said on January 15, 2020 at 8:10 am


Very Helpful! Thank you
Anonymous said on January 9, 2020 at 9:02 am


Thank you so much. This got me out of the few hours rant of frustration.
Haresh said on January 6, 2020 at 11:53 pm


Thank you. This article helped me. My issue was my 2019 MacBook Pro doesn’t have a CD/DVD so my VM image never had a CD drive. Adding the CD to the VM allowed the VM to boot with CD in a disconnected state but it was there. Then the option to install VMware Tools was not grey! hurray! Got my VMware tools installed and was then able to use the features such as sharing a drive with my VM.

Thanks for the tip of adding a CD drive. I never realized this before because all my other VM hosts had CD drives. This should allow my other Kubernetes VM’s to also get the tools now. I’ll try that next.
1. Scott said on September 26, 2022 at 11:22 pm
  
  
  Same with mine. A newer dell with no CD drive. Added that and done. Thanks
Ascar said on November 10, 2019 at 1:20 pm


These days the most important and most valuable product of Oracle is VirtualBox! Nobody cares about Oracle Database, Oracle eBusiness Suite and the like anymore.
mysiak said on November 8, 2019 at 10:35 pm


VMWare Workstation Player also requires some VMX file editing to tweak some of the features not available via GUI.

Why not just use VirtualBox instead?
1. Carl-Erik Kopseng said on September 5, 2022 at 3:04 pm
  
  
  Because VirtualBox is dead. It hardly receives any development resources, is stuck on the x86 platform (no support for ARM for instance) and is quite buggy compared to VMWare. I moved over to VMWare in 2017 after a decade of VirtualBox blue screens. No more.
mikef90000 said on November 8, 2019 at 9:51 pm


Good to find a non-enterprise user of VMware. Several years ago I considered getting up to speed on it but VMware reportedly laid off the development staff of Workstation (or Player, or whatever they call it this week :().
Say, what do they call it now and what version is it?
Is the free version hard to find and are there any significant limitations compared to Virtualbox or KVM?
TIA, Mike
1. Anonymous said on January 21, 2021 at 4:23 pm
  
  
  helped a lot . thx very much
2. VioletMoon said on November 9, 2019 at 6:07 pm
  
  
  VMware Workstation free version =
  
  https://www.vmware.com/products/workstation-player/workstation-player-evaluation.html
  
  I prefer VirtualBox simply because it works well with any distro. I rather doubt Ashwin’s problem would occur on VirtualBox.
  
  Yet, when it works and one does whatever is necessary, I find VMware to have a more polished look and feel.
  
  One will eventually encounter a problem with either tool which will require a bit of research–no “real” problems, though.
  
  Windows Hyper-V works fine.