It is always very painful to run any guest Operating System if your VM tools are not installed.

So lets have a look at the benefits of the VMware Tools :

  1. Mouse synchronization with the host operating system so that you don’t have to keep releasing your mouse(using CLT+ALT) from the guest to go back to the host.
  2. Improved network compatibility & performance
  3. Copy and paste activities between the host and guest.

Lets learn how to install these VM tools in your VMware Server.Here we are considering Linux  as our Guest OS and windows as our Host OS.

First make sure that the VMware tools are not installed .If your mouse is getting stuck inside the VM when you click on the screen that means there are no VM tools installed.

Now to get it unstuck,you have to release it with ALT-CLT keys and also at the bottom of the screen you will see the message “You do not have VMware Tools installed”.

Now, inorder to install VMware Tools, go to VMware Server Toolbar and click on VM and then Install VMWare Tools.

VM-> Install VMware Tools

Next, you will see the following screen:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Click Install & hold on for a while .Have patience.

You may see some delay here because at this point what happens in the background is that the VMware tools are mounted as ISO CD drive on your Virtual Linux machine.On your host computer (windows) these tools are located at C:\Program Files\VMware\VMWare server\linux.iso

Within few moments you should see that the VM Tools CD is now loaded and a window comesup with the contents of the CDROM as shown in the below figure.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now to manually start the installation , right click on the VMware Tools GZ file and extract the contents to a default folder on to

the Desktop.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After the extraction is done,Close all the windows and go to your desktop and open the vmware-tools-distrib folder.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Double-click on vmware-install.pl to execute it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Select Run in terminal

The terminal window will appear and you will be asked many questions.Just take all the defaults by pressing ENTER .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Else you can just select RUN and with in a moment your done with the installation.

Now you should reboot your linux system.When the system comesback,try to move your mouse out of the screen.Hopefully it does move out of the screen.

Everybody who are using VMware should install VMtools on to any guest operating systems are they are using.These tools will make using VMware much easier and less frustrating.

Having the installation done,use it for a while and then go back to the system wherein the tools are not installed and you will notice the difference for sure.

Good Luck guys!!!!