When installing the latest vSphere Client 6.0 on my Windows 10 computer, I got the following error “VMInstallHcmon – Failed to install hcmon driver”
Troubleshooting
When your installing the your VMware product of choice, HCMON is installed as a hardware driver, which is the problem. Windows interprets this as a user adding hardware to the PC and in many environments that is something your operating system security or administrator may not automatically allow. Installing VMware Remote Console on a system where other VMware applications have been installed might result in the following error: Failed to install the HCmon driver Workaround: Go to Task Manager, Services tab, and stop the VMUSBArbService.
- Try KB2006486. But I don’t see Non-Plug and Play Drivers and VMware hcmon on my Windows 10 computer
- Try renaming the C:WindowsSystem32drivershcmon.sys file. Still get the same error
Solution
- On my laptop, vSphere Client 5.5 and 6.0 (older build), and their respective Update Manager plug-in are installed
- Remove these older clients and plug-ins
- vSphere Client 6.0 installation completes successfully
I tried the install the most recent version of VMRC which can be found here and I got this error message during the installation:
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 FilesVMwareUSBhcmon.sys’ to ‘C:Windowssystem32drivershcmon.sys’
VNLGetLocalizedString: Failed to allocate a localized string 0x00000020: 317
VNLCopyFileToSystemDir: Failed to copy file: “C:Windowssystem32drivershcmon.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:
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.
- The elevation process of setups was little bit changed in Windows 10
- The hcmon.sys file was already there and the elevated permission was to less to replace it.
Failed To Install Hcmon Driver Windows 10 Vmware Windows 10
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:WindowsSystem32 directory replaced.