Today when i was working with v2v migration of windows 2000 server, I got a strange issue while upgrading  VMware tools after migrating virtual machine from ESX 2.5 to ESXi 5.0. VMware tools upgrade failed. I tried to un-install the VMware tools manually and to install the new version of VM tools But it didn’t allowed me to uninstall the older version of VMtools. VMtools uninstall failed because it cannot reference the previous VMware Tools MSI.

 Found VMware Kb 1010614 article pointing towards the resolution of same issue.

1.I have mounted the VMtools CD-ROM by Right-click the VM and Install/Upgrade VMtools

2.Open the command prompt by typing cmd

3. Point towards the CD-ROM drive in command prompt.

4. Type “setup /c” and press Enter to force removal of all registry entries and delete the old version of VMware Tools. In a few second , it clears the registry entries of my older VMtools installation.

5. Install new version of VMware tools manually by double-click on CD-ROM drive

6. Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the VMtools installation.

7. Reboot the server for the changes to take effect.

The above steps resolved VMtools upgrade issue in few minutes.

Thanks for Reading !!!!!