I’ve encountered an issue yesterday night during my upgrade installation of VMware Workstation from version 7 to 8. it initially shows that the installation failed due to one of the services (vmware authorization services) wasn’t running, and when i go and troubleshoot manually, (went to services.msc stop start the services, removing old loopback adapters, installing it again using admin ID, even rebooted my PC abt 3-4 times); but the error still there.. after a clean manual uninstallation; (went to device manager, delete the vmware assoc. adapters, registries, files, etc) well.. the problem still persist… its looks like the installer went to uninstall mode if i clicked ignore button as the vm requires services to be brought up before it can function..
so when the error msg popped up, i tried to kill the msi installer process and executed the .exe as usual directly; and something unexpected happens.. the app worked flawlessly (till now) although the vmware auth services is not running.. pretty weird huh?
and when i proceed to install windows 8 developer preview for the first time, it gives me “Vmware Workstation 8 Windows Cannot Read the <ProductKey> settings from the unattend answer file” error; and the vm keeps on rebooting.. the solution to overcome this is quite simple, which is to remove or Disconnect “Floppy” from your Windows Virtual Machine. (Actually autoinst.flp. file contains the ProductKey & autoinst.flp is mounted when you start the VM)
Power off Windows 8 Virtual Machine & Go to Virtual Machine settings & remove the Floppy, voila! Windows 8 prev is on!
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