Sdelete vmware tools. Actual disk space used currently by VM1 is only 50GB.

Sdelete vmware tools. Registry keys can be left behind if the host computer hangs or Script to Remove VMtools based on Vmware KB1001354 - julianoabr/vm-remove-vmtools Sep 26, 2025 · Notes: It is important to enable logging for the appropriate process for the issue you are troubleshooting. Aug 21, 2024 · You may want to uninstall VMware Tools for some reason. We use VMWare ESXi 6. Uninstalling VMware Tools from the command line is a fairly straightforward process, and can be done in two main steps. Our Cookie Notice provides more information and explains how to amend your cookie settings. . Apr 22, 2024 · We're in the middle of a VMware to Hyper-V migration and discovered that VMware Tools version 12 doesn't uninstall correctly in Hyper-V environments, even though it uninstalls fine within VMware. But I have a large Dec 20, 2024 · In this article, we will discuss how to shrink a VMware virtual machine and free up disk space. There should be a script called `vmware-uninstall-tools. It has done this 528 time (s). In this comprehensive tutorial, we walk you through the troubleshooting steps to resolve this common problem. ” Jan 29, 2025 · VMware products might not install on Windows hosts if the installer detects certain other VMware products on the computer. 144K subscribers in the vmware community. pl`. Note: Backup your VM before doing this! Apr 2, 2020 · 1 Download an installation package of VMware tools (newer version than installed prefered) Run in CLI “setup64 /c” This uninstalls VMware Tools and performs a complete clean up. Mar 12, 2025 · When using Storage vMotion to move a thin disk between two VMFS volumes with the same block size, null blocks are not reclaimed. The problem was that wmware-installer somehow refused to uninstall the previous package, so I can My Ubuntu image VMware disk has grown to 5GB physical file size. Sep 5, 2013 · Guide to show how to reclaim disk space by zeroing out free space on thin provisioned VMDKs using sdelete Oct 28, 2025 · Upgrading/Installing the VMware tools or uninstallation of VMware Tools sometimes fails with the following errors: The feature you are trying to use is on a network resource that is unavailable. Let the Guest manage the updates to vmware tools as part of your patch process After an update, I can no longer run VMWare Workstation, it fails to open. Here you will learn how to manage VMware Snapshots: Delete or Edit or Revert a Feb 7, 2011 · VMware Tools Shrink Option Unavailable? Matt Liebowitz February 7, 2011 6 5302 In my recent post on using svMotion to reclaim disk space, I talked about using SDelete to zero out blocks for free space reclamation. I want to uninstall the VMware Tools from the VM. Page cannot be displayed. Mar 25, 2014 · I built our base image using VMWare Workstation and it installed VMWare tools. The problem is the hypervisor does not know how much of the presented size (aka maximum size) is indeed used by the OS. for installation : vmware tools installation Steps : Dec 8, 2023 · We're in the middle of a VMware to Hyper-V migration and discovered that VMware Tools version 12 doesn't uninstall correctly in Hyper-V environments, even though it uninstalls fine within VMware. pl on Ubuntu? On a Windows 10 OS, I have been using VMware to set up a vitrual machine (because of some strange security concerns with the company, I can not use Hyper-V) and I am usi… Oct 29, 2018 · Hello, im preparing to go through the process of reclaiming some space on thin provisioned vmdks. It's a dynamically growing disk with the maximum capacity of 8GB. Having thin provisioned disk is usually no longer a performance problem so it is a We're finishing up using Azure Migrate to migrate 85 VMware VMs to Azure. I was following this VMWare knowledgebase article about using sdelete from systernals and then a command line in ESXi shell to accomplish this. I am getting "The VMware Tools Service service terminated unexpectedly. I have to uninstall the tools and later reinstall them also u Feb 18, 2015 · Ever had the problem where you either have a corrupt copy of VMware Tools that can’t be updated or you perform an update and the install fails part way through leaving remnants behind? Dec 11, 2024 · This tutorial shows you how to completely remove the old VMWare Workstation player in Ubuntu 24. Sdelete will basically put zeros in the blocks and can expand your thin provisioned drive to the max amount. Can anyone please point out whats missing in the batch file? Dec 19, 2011 · Hi, I've been running sdelete -c x:\ and migrating vmdk's between different LUN's but have been unsuccessful at reclaiming the wasted space back. exe present in the CD mounted in my virtual machine: the one taken from isoimages of the latest VMWare installation (11. LinuxLog in as root and enter vmware-uninstall-tools. The process will be to sdelete -z the drive first, then set the datamover to the old legacy datamover and Storgage VMotion the disk to reclaim. , but haven't been able to get anything to work. Trying to install it fails on the virtual network, the patch no longer works. if its using vmware tools I wonder if it even indeed works at all) and the only reason I wonder that was cause I did intially try to shrink my disk using vmware tools shrink cmdlet vs sysinternals sdelete. He specializes in troubleshooting a wide range of computer-related issues. With VMware, each OS occupies its own separate space within the computer, allowing users to run multiple programs at the same time without having Jul 4, 2017 · open-vm-tools creates a log file in /var/log/vmware-vmsvc. SDelete accepts wild card characters as part of the directory or file specifier. 6. The screenshot below shows all services before the step above. I looked in /etc/vmware-tools/ how to disable, but found no configuration options to disable logging. Null blocks are copied from source to destination resulting in a VMDK that is the same size, despite thin being chosen as the destination disk type. When prompted, click Yes to restart Windows. Jan 10, 2025 · In this article, we will explore the process of shrinking a VMware Virtual Machine, defining the benefits, potential risks, and the step-by-step procedures necessary to reclaim valuable disk space. May need to manually uninstall VMware Tools. Read the rules before posting! A community dedicated to discussion of VMware products and services. In a vSphere and open-vm-tools deployment, if you decide to use packages specific to Linux operating systems to manage VMware Tools, and if you already used vSphere to install VMware Tools, you must uninstall the existing VMware Tools. The only downside is that you have to power off the affected machines. Search for the branch with a key named DisplayName and has a value of VMware Tools. When attempting to thin a disk after either using VMware Tools Prepare to shrink option or using a third-party product Mar 5, 2014 · Have no fear, this problem can be solved. Mar 2, 2020 · That powershell script didn't help. I have also got below script to do it and it doesn't seems to work. This post introduces how to do that in 4 ways with one-by-one steps. SDelete is a free command line tool that has the ability to clean and zero out free space. 3). However, there may be situations where you need to uninstall VMware Tools from your Linux, Solaris, or FreeBSD guest operating system. While it offers advanced features for developers, testers, and IT professionals, there may come a time when you find yourself needing to uninstall it—whether due to software conflicts, an upgrade Jun 28, 2023 · We're in the middle of a VMware to Hyper-V migration and discovered that VMware Tools version 12 doesn't uninstall correctly in Hyper-V environments, even though it uninstalls fine within VMware. May 6, 2012 · If you want to uninstall vmware tools from installed guest OS , for any reason here is quick and dirty guide, for installing vmware tools in Ubuntu see another guide . Note: As of Linux kernel version 3. 0. Jan 18, 2023 · Manchmal kann es vorkommen, dass die VMware Tools nicht deinstalliert werden können. Its a Windows 2012 VM. Dec 14, 2024 · Manually delete VMware Tools installation files under these locations. Jul 20, 2014 · 2. May 6, 2025 · Note: SDelete -z will cause the guest OS to use up 100% of the available space disk during this process while zeroing free space. Oct 5, 2020 · Hi, all. in ECE ) Abhishek Silwal is an Electronics Engineer and a technical writer at TechNewsToday. I was trying to install the new VMWare Workstation Pro 17. If you installed VMware Tools from a tarball or any other manual method, you’ll want to be in the directory where you untarred it. 1 I found this page that claims to explain how to do this, but my version of VMware Workstation has no "Install VMware Tools" option anywhere in the menu bar menus. Do I have to do UNMAP on the storage side after this? (Because data is actually In a vSphere and open-vm-tools deployment, if you decide to use packages specific to Linux operating systems to manage VMware Tools, and if you already used vSphere to install VMware Tools, you must uninstall the existing VMware Tools. Here are the steps : 1. Oct 16, 2024 · For instructions on manually installing VMware Tools in a Mac OS guest, see Installing VMware Tools in a Mac OS Guest Note: If your issue persists even after uninstalling VMware Tools, see Cleaning up after an incomplete uninstallation on a Windows host (1308). Sep 24, 2025 · Symptoms: Upgrading or uninstalling VMware Tools fails with the following error: Message: The feature you are trying to use is on a network resource that is unavailable. VMware Tools Administration document describes how to install, upgrade, and configure VMware Tools. I cleaned some stuff inside Linux distro and now inside it occupie Script to Remove VMtools based on Vmware KB1001354 - julianoabr/vm-remove-vmtools Oct 24, 2014 · Memorise Uninstalling and manually installing VMware Tools October 24, 2014 To uninstall VMware Tools in Windows XP: Click Start > Control Panel. The Command Prompt opens. Nov 24, 2014 · Thin provisioned disks are a great feature to save capacity as you virtual machines filesystem will never use the full capacity. Oct 26, 2018 · If you are not quite clear on why you would want to change to Open-VM-Tools then here are a couple of reasons No need to reconfigure vmware tools after every kernel update. Optimize your Linux OS effortlessly! In a vSphere and open-vm-tools deployment, if you decide to use packages specific to Linux operating systems to manage VMware Tools, and if you already used vSphere to install VMware Tools, you must uninstall the existing VMware Tools. # VMware Tools uninstaller and cleanup # # Finds VMware Tools in the Uninstall section of either 64-bit or 32-bit HKLM registry hive node # # Tries to uninstall VMware Tools using MSIExec which is the preferred way to uninstall the software # Then checks to see if VMware Tools has been removed from Uninstall # If software unistall failed a manual cleanup routine will trigger # # The cleanup Aug 7, 2023 · Hey community friends! Has anyone successfully uninstalled VMWare tools using PowerShell? NOT PowerCLI but PowerShell? I tried these commands with no luck Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_Product | Where-Object { $. Oct 9, 2023 · Let me give you an example: I use a script that calls SDelete with /accepteula switch within virtual machines - especially ones that don't have VMware Tools installed. Name -li… VMware Tools is a set of utilities that enhances the performance and functionality of guest operating systems running on VMware virtual machines. Install Windows 10 on a virtual machine, and install VMware Tools 11. After in-place operating system upgrade from Windows Server 2016 or Windows Server 2019 (with VMware Tools installed) to Windows Server 2022, PVSCSI and VMXNET3 drivers continue running using the version installed Apr 19, 2024 · Hello, I've moved a few VMs permanently from our on-premises VMware environment to Azure using Azure Site Recovery as the mechanism to migrate. Our logon script maps our network printers, and as soon as they get mapped a copy is also added that contains a #plus a random number. Sep 4, 2024 · Power on the virtual machine. 5. 🔧 Tools Used: VMware ESXi VMware remote console Windows Server (Guest OS) 🔔 Mar 17, 2015 · So question now is, does bitlooker auto defrag to ensure best results from sdelete (or whatever veeam is using. GitHub Gist: instantly share code, notes, and snippets. How do I uninstall it completely so I can a Apr 4, 2018 · 1) Start the VMware Tools Install/Upgrade from the vCenter/vSphere console/client Note: If the following popup appears, select Interactive Tools Upgrade and OK 2) Log on to the virtual machine console and the VMware Tools Install Wizard should be starting 3) When the wizard loads, click Next Apr 20, 2023 · In this guide, you will learn how to Here are some exciting articles: How To Deploy Azure VMware Solution Private Cloud, How to Create a Snapshot on vSphere Web Client, Create or delete snapshots on VMware Workstation, and How to upgrade VMware Tools in vSphere. Actual disk space used currently by VM1 is only 50GB. Installing and using VMware Workstation on PC is super easy, but when it comes to uninstall VMware workstation, you can’t uninstall it just like any other app and program installed on your computer. This will zero out unused blocks on your VMDK. To collect the VMware Tools logs from the virtual machine's guest OS, - Windows: run the C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Tools\vm-support. Once in this directory, run the following command: Oct 19, 2025 · We're in the middle of a VMware to Hyper-V migration and discovered that VMware Tools version 12 doesn't uninstall correctly in Hyper-V environments, even though it uninstalls fine within VMware. Sep 30, 2025 · Index of tools/releases/latest/windows/Index of tools/releases/latest/windows/ Mar 16, 2022 · What are the implications of removing VMware Tools with a Windows Server OS for the vmxnet3 NIC type? Error. However, in many cases enabling the primary process vmsvc (as well as vmusr in ESXi 5. For more information about Linux OSPs for VMware Tools, see Operating System Specific Packages for Linux Guest Operating Systems. E. We also removed the ask to continue prompts. For example, in Chrome browser, you can click on the menu button, select “More tools,” and then choose “Clear browsing data” to clean the cache. So, in fact, to reduce the size of the vmdk file, we saw that after sdelete on Windows, you would need to use vmkfstool to perform UNMAP on ESXi. Symptoms: Upgrading or uninstalling an existing installation of VMware Tools on a Windows virtual machine fails with the error, “The feature you are trying to use is on a network resource that is unavailable. That’ll usually be something like `/usr/lib/vmware-tools`. As a part of the Operating System components, Windows Server 2022 has embedded drivers for both PVSCSI and VMXNET3. Follow our guide for stress-free removal. vmdk within console and still have no luck with it. From the list of installed software, select VMware Tools. exe /c This Ever had the problem where you either have a corrupt copy of VMware Tools that can’t be updated or you perform an update and the install fails part way VMware Tools Administration document describes how to install, upgrade, and configure VMware Tools. Browse to HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\uninstall. Using the SDelete tool can help clean out the cobwebs on your virtual disk and free up the formerly used space. All the drivers can be downloaded from Microsoft Update Catalog In a vSphere and open-vm-tools deployment, if you decide to use packages specific to Linux operating systems to manage VMware Tools, and if you already used vSphere to install VMware Tools, you must uninstall the existing VMware Tools. How to remove VMware Tools manually is today's topic as you might need this for your infrastructure. This powershell script will uninstall VMware Tools and force shutdown the server in 120 seconds. Click Remove. May 4, 2022 · How do I rum vmware-uninstall-tools. 1 to windows 11 Aug 4, 2014 · Here are the steps: Use the Sysinternals sdelete tool, with the -z switch, on the existing disk. Nov 4, 2019 · Hi Team, I have issues updating/reinstall tools where MSI package is being searched in temp local but couldn't be found. Another way to do this is to use the Shrink option which is part of the VM w are Tools. Once restarted, open My Computer and navigate to C:\Program Files and remove the VMware folder if it exists Sep 29, 2023 · SDelete is a command line utility that takes a number of options. I managed to fix it by manually removing below registry entries and reboot it to load vmtools from update manager. Aug 15, 2022 · VMware Tools provides the PVSCSI and VMXNET3 drivers by default. I've already tried mounting the Tools iso, etc. vbs script from within the virtual In a vSphere and open-vm-tools deployment, if you decide to use packages specific to Linux operating systems to manage VMware Tools, and if you already used vSphere to install VMware Tools, you must uninstall the existing VMware Tools. In any given use, it allows you to delete one or more files and/or directories, or to cleanse the free space on a logical disk. If it won’t help, you can “upgrade” VMware tools, reboot and start uninstallation. Create an image of the virtual machine. I have a question while studying about Reclaim. The official installer however told me to uninstall the old VMWare Player 17. Let’s say we delete some data on VM1 and free up The answer of @harrym is pretty good, but it actually does not answer the question. It all seems straightforward. For more information, see VMware support of Nov 12, 2024 · Unable to upgrade the existing installation of VMware Tools because the previous installation fails to be removed. Silently uninstall VMware Tools using PowerShell. For Red Hat-based systems, you might use `sudo yum remove open-vm-tools` instead. I do not know a single system where you do not have at least 10GB of free space for OS disks. exe /c For 64 bit guest operating systems: setup64. Please contact your service provider for more details. They don’t show up in Devices and Printers Jan 27, 2021 · I created this script to uninstall VMware tools but cannot get it to work. 9 or later, VMware supports the open-vm-tools package where it is included in a Linux distribution or its official repositories. Kudos to Matt Liebowitz’s post on the topic that I have leveraged in the past. Duncan’s post here gives details on using the VM w are Tools Shrink option so I won’t go Aug 24, 2016 · Kind of new to this virtualization. This is how VMware Tools gets "installed" on Jun 15, 2012 · 31 sudo vmware-installer -u vmware-workstation Used to uninstall complete vmware-workstation package including vmware-player. When the guest is installed in Jan 7, 2025 · If the guest includes open-vm-tools-gui, open-vm-tools, or vmware-guest-kmp-desktop components, then the components must be removed before installing the VMware Tools supplied by VMware. We also had issues deleting c:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Tools because eventlog and WMI services were running. Understanding Virtual Machine Disk Space Before we dive into the process of shrinking a VMware virtual machine, it’s important to understand how disk space is May 10, 2022 · This article provides instructions for installing/uninstalling a VMware Windows device driver (without Windows Update or installers like VMware Tools). I have also tried the command vmkfstools -i disk. power down the VM SSH into your host and use the vmkfstools --punchzero command on the VMDK, which will convert your disk from thick to thin and clear out zeroed blocks. I'm new to PowerShell. Open Add/Remove Programs. Feb 19, 2018 · SDelete is a free tool made by Sysinternals and available for download from the Microsoft site here. Oct 19, 2025 · I'm sure someone can make this better, but my co-worker and I took this code and made a script to remove VMware tools from 300 domain servers remotely after migrating from on-prem to AWS. 3. From now on you should be able to delete the driver file. Click Ok to try again, or enter an alternative path to a folder containing the installation package 'VMwareTools64. I uninstalled VMWare tools before I captured the image with MDT, but now I am finding a minor issue with extra printers being mapped. 0 first. I understand that erasing data from a VM will only delete index files and not delete data from storage blocks. I used this to reduce the size of the virtual disk from 28 gigabytes down to 13 gigabytes. The uninstall feature of VMware Tools fails to complete. So the datastore1 used space should show as 50GB and free space as 950GB. Then I've executed using Command as admin the setup64. After that, the only other item that had to be manually removed was the VMware Tools folder located at C:\ProgramData\VMware. These products might be incorrectly detected, even if the products have already been removed. I am not considering databases, applications or fileservers which will grow constantly. msi' in the box below. 04 and Linux Mint 22. In the command prompt, enter D:. 1. Correct me if I’m wrong. 2. Jun 1, 2025 · To upgrade or uninstall VMware Tools successfully on a Windows virtual machine. by default. Apr 26, 2025 · | Filed Under: Desktop Virtualization Tagged With: Desktop Virtualization, How-to, Vmware, VMware Player, VMware Product uninstall About Vladan SEGET This website is maintained by Vladan SEGET. In the Windows virtual machine, click Start > Run, type cmd, and click OK. Run this command: For 32 bit guest operating systems: setup. Luckily, there are some tools to allow you to reclaim unused space from your virtual thin disks. Mar 15, 2025 · How to Uninstall VMware Workstation in Windows 11 VMware Workstation is a robust virtualization tool that allows users to run multiple operating systems simultaneously on a single physical machine. VMware software enables users to install multiple Operating Systems (OS) on a single computer, without having to partition a single hard drive. The compaction (vmware-vdiskmakager -k) applies to a growable vmdk. So the steps to shrink the disk are: Resize VMware software is a virtualization platform that is used to create and manage virtual machines, or VMs. This removes the old problem of a Linux VM with tools installed, but not running. vmdk -d thin newdisk. Contribute to dylanmccrimmon/Remove-VMwareTools development by creating an account on GitHub. This can occur if registry keys that should be removed during the uninstallation of a product are left behind. Sep 12, 2022 · Home Virtualization How to Uninstall VMware Workstation in Windows and Linux By Abhishek Silwal Abhishek Silwal Electronics Engineer ( B. x) captures most problems. May 4, 2020 · I've also tried to remove the folder C:/Program Files/VMWare/VMWare Tools and all files inside, but some files where used so I leave them here. Mac OS X, OS X, or macOSUse the Uninstall VMware Tools application, found in /Library/Application Support/VMware Tools. pl in a terminal window. The tool’s primary purpose is to securely delete files by writing randomized data over released blocks to prevent deleted data from being recovered. We will cover step-by-step instructions for shrinking a VM using VMware tools and explore additional methods for optimizing disk space. Apr 27, 2024 · How To uninstall VMware tools after azure migration via PowerShell? This script will manually rip out all VMware Tools registry entries and files for Windows server 2008-2019 and Windows 8. Usage: Aug 19, 2009 · vmroyale, tank you for the reply, but how can we make sure that the "shrink" command is always available in the vmware tools, and the sdelete will actually save space rather than growing the disk? I have installed ESXi 4 with several guest “Widows Server 2008 32-bit”, “Windows 7 32-bit and 64 bit”, “Windows NT 4. In case some are in use you first need to reboot the computer. " in the event viewer. In this video, I am going to show you How to Press CTRL+ALT+DELETE on VMware Esxi, or how to unlock windows server on virtual boxTags:virtualbox,virtual m May 5, 2025 · Simplify the work to uninstall VMware Workstation from Linux. Note: Select the appropriate user and username in the machine in the path. In Workstation, VM > Install VMware Tools. Die Programme müssen nun von Hand deinstalliert werden. power up your VM Here’s a nice blog post that goes over the specifics, if you May 2, 2017 · Currently, VMware does not have automatic space reclamation. Has anyone had any luck uninstalling VMware Tools after the VM has been migrated? The VMware Tools service is disabled by Azure Migrate, but it would be nice to clean up. Improve virtual machine performance: Use virtual machine management tools like VMware Tools to optimize the virtual machine. Feb 26, 2014 · SDelete, a command-line tool that Mark Russinovich created and Microsoft offers for free can be scripted and performs a VMDK shrink differently than VMware Tools. 0 local disk Datastore1 ( 1 TB ) If we create a Virtual Machine VM1 (Windows 2012) with THIN provisioning disk space of around 200GB. His educational background in Electronics Engineering has given Full Bio Learn about Aug 2, 2015 · Sometimes you might encounter problems with VMware tools. :) Jan 3, 2022 · VMware Workstation pro is a desktop hypervisor that allow users to run multiple operating systems as virtual machines on Windows operating system; Windows 11 and Windows 10. May need to remove VMware Tools. Windows XP and earlierIn the guest operating system, select Add/Remove Programs. log, which grows out of proportions. The OP wants to reduce the maximum size. 0” and VMWare tools under each guest. Restore the image on a physical machine. vSphere Storage describes virtualized and software-defined storage technologies that VMware ESXi and VMware vCenter Server offer, and explains how to configure and use these technologies. The first step is to change to the directory where the VMware Tools installation files are stored. Optimize cloud infrastructure with VMware for app platforms, private cloud, edge, networking, and security. The default directory is usually C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Tools. 1 today in my Ubuntu laptop. Navigate to: In Fusion, Virtual Machine > Install VMware Tools. I didn't install VMware Tools on the physical machine, rather on a virtual machine, which was later transferred to a physical machine. Jul 15, 2022 · 0 I have a Windows 8 VM in my VMware Workstation 16 Pro. Step 1: Shut down the Nov 7, 2016 · If you are using VMware, a much better way is to use the tools built into VMware to reclaim any unused space on the virtual drive. This will lead to a temporary increase in used space on the datastore. Mar 8, 2025 · sc delete "VMware Physical Disk Helper Service" sc delete vmhgfs sc delete vmci sc delete vmaudio sc delete vmusbmouse sc delete vmvss A few of the VMs still had the VMMEMCTL installed after running the initial script. The VMs are running in Azure now and the Site Recovery piece has been fully committed and removed. It does nothing on preallocated one's. In addition to this great post by MigrationMark about Automating VM Migration and uninstalling VMware Tools I decided to write a little powershell script that finds the GUID of the VMware Tools Registry Key and use it to uninstall VMware Tools with this key. Oct 19, 2025 · We're in the middle of a VMware to Hyper-V migration and discovered that VMware Tools version 12 doesn't uninstall correctly in Hyper-V environments, even though it uninstalls fine within VMware. I noticed… This website uses cookies for website functionality and traffic analytics. I recently migrated from esx to hyperv and did not uninstall the vmware tools prior to migration. In this guide, we will show you how to uninstall VMware Tools on these operating systems. Is there a more effective way of zeroing out the unused sapce rather the 2 methods mentioned? Thank you. The following corrective action will be taken in 300000 milliseconds: Restart the service. jyyj5 hhefv svhmj wf cha37a hel yji9 hi mv2yb pgud9q