On one system, my newly installed vmware player 2.5.x fails to start.

Error message is:


This report has the same issue with no resolution: communities.vmware.com/thread/173640

Tried this method: communities.vmware.com/thread/171394


which yields the same result:


some Arch linux hints here: bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=61894

Start as root, using sux? Failed, same error.

and some more hints, might be the eth interfaces have changed: ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=6240106
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Solution found: After some reading and thinking, I realized that the problem lies in changing something in your system between installs, then vmware, in the new version 2.5 and greater, fails to reconfigure it.

I was afraid things wouldn't work perfectly with the new bundle installer, and sure enough, it's trying to be too clever for its own good.

Luckily, the solution is quite easy, first, uninstall vmware, then: rm -rf /etc/vmware

Then reinstall vmware, or vmplayer, and the problem should be gone.

This removes the old vmware configuration information, and when vmware starts up again, it isn't trying to use a corrupted database, it makes a new one.

Obviously, vmware installer itself should do this, but if it did, this wouldn't be a case of too clever, yet not clever enough.

Anyway, I'm posting this in hopes that it will help others who hit the same annoying issue.

I'll also add this to the installer svmi, but that's only for Debian users, this information should help others who hit the same issue.
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