VMware Remote Console (VMRC) 8.0 failed to install.

I tried the install the most recent version of VMRC which can be found here and I got this error message during the installation:
hcmon_01
I found the KB2130850 which mentioned that I should uninstall all vSphere Client instances, install VMRC and reinstall all vSphere Client instances. Unfortunately this was not the solution. I have then uninstalled the Horizon View Client too to be on the safe side. Again this was also not the solution.
I have then checked the vminst.log which can be found in the %TEMP% folder and saw the following error messages:

VNLCopyFileToSystemDir: Copying ‘C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\VMware\USB\hcmon.sys’ to ‘C:\Windows\system32\drivers\hcmon.sys’
VNLGetLocalizedString: Failed to allocate a localized string 0x00000020: 317
VNLCopyFileToSystemDir: Failed to copy file: “C:\Windows\system32\drivers\hcmon.sys”. (null) [32]
VNL_InstallHcmon: Failed to create service for hcmon driver.

This looked like that there are not sufficient permissions to copy the hcmon.sys to the destination folder, although the installer told me that he is using elevated permissions:
hcmon_02
Because you haven’t “Run as Administrator” for msi packages I used an elevated cmd prompt to start the msi with Administrator permissions and lo and behold VMRC was installed without problems. There are 2 possibilities from my point of view why this happened.

  1. The elevation process of setups was little bit changed in Windows 10
  2. The hcmon.sys file was already there and the elevated permission was to less to replace it.

I did a quick check about these possibilities and it was 2. When there is an existing hcmon.sys (from vSphere Client), VMRC installer can’t replace it even if the installer gets elevated for installation. The only possibility was to start the installer as Administrator to get the hcmon.sys in the C:\Windows\System32 directory replaced.

4 Responses

  1. JamieGator says:

    Thanks for this post!  Finally starting to use the web client after upgrading to vSphere 6 and was getting a little irritated by this.  Saved me some time investigating this.

  2. Neil says:

    Excellent, thank you.
    Running from with Admin Command Prompt fix this for me

  3. mtd says:

    Thankin you!!

  4. Luke Peters says:

    Thank you so much.  Worked great.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *