Hi there!
We are planning to deploy the VMWare Client Integration Plugin 6.0.0 to several dozen computers in our network. We are using Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager to manage our client (e.g. install software packages).
The problem we face with this installation (MSI extracted from VMware-ClientIntegrationPlugin-6.0.0.exe) is the following:
The installation of the MSI fails with error code 1603, if the MSI is installed in the windows SYSTEM user context (SCCM uses this context to install software packages). With a normal administrator user the MSI runs fine and exits with exit code 0.
In both cases (admin user, system user) the MSI is called as follows:
C:\Windows\system32\msiexec.exe /qn /i "VMware-ClientIntegrationPlugin-6.0.0.msi" /l*v "C:\ProgramData\Logs\VMWare_ClientIntegrationPlugin_6.0.0_i.log"
I investigated this issue and found this quiet similar problem here.
The described solution (rename hosts.bak, which exists sometimes, but not always) to this issue does not affect the result, so the problem remains the same. I tried to narrow the problem down with the following methods:
1. MSI verbose Logging (Please find these files attached)
- VMWare_ClientIntegrationPlugin_6.0.0_i_2015-08-07_130518_system.log -> System Account
- VMWare_ClientIntegrationPlugin_6.0.0_i_2015-08-07_130549_admin.log -> Administrator Account
-> After the following line, the log file differs
Executing op: CustomActionSchedule(Action=CsdServiceInstall,ActionType=3090,Source=C:\Program Files\VMware\Client Integration Plug-in 6.0\vmware-csd.exe,Target=--install,)
2. ProcMon Capture of "vmware-csd.exe"
As the verbose Logging led to a problem with "vmware-csd.exe" I captured all operations of it with ProcMon, one time with the system account (fails), the other time with the administrator account (success). (Please find "ProcMon_vmware-csd.exe_events_system+admin.xlsx" attached)@
Unfortunately I wasn't able to make any sense of the differences.
To reproduce this issue, you can use "psexec.exe -s -i cmd.exe" to run a CMD within system account context.
Is there a workaround to install this Plugin with the system account?
Any help or hints are much apprechiated!
Thanks,
Arno