I had installed VMWARE on one of my Windows 2003 (SP2) server to run an image file of Linux. In order to upgrade the VMWARE software to it’s latest version, I downloaded the new setup and ran it. It prompted me saying that the old version needs to be removed first and then the new one can be installed. Fortunately, it also told me that the Virtual Machines already configured will not be disturbed. That certainly brought a smile on my face, but not for long.

The uninstall process started but it seemed to keep crapping out. It would go so far (almost to the finish) and then just… sit there. Well, I almost sat there staring at the screen for a good 30-45 minutes, had 3-4 cups of coffee. Now this was torture.

I decided to kill the process and opened Task Manager. I could see 3 processes of msiexec.exe running along with the VMWARE-Server-Installer process. Surprised to see 3 process of msiexec.exe running, I picked a random one and killed it. To my surprise; the installtion proceeded and prompted me to choose if I wanted to keep the license key in the registry.

Hope this accidental discovery would help someone in the future.