I needed to shrink my windows image file, which had grown from a true windows size of 2.5 to about 12.5 gigabytes on disk. This takes a long time to backup, and is just empty data.

This vmware thread: communities.vmware.com/thread/124951
reminded me to install the shrink feature using vmware tools from vmware workstation .bundle file, which requires the following setup procedure.

I got these basic steps from: www.brandonhutchinson.com/Installing_VMware_Tools_with_VMware_Player.html


Then, do these to run the tools installer
5. In Devices, in vmplayer top controls, select: CD/DVD, then select: Connect to disk image file (iso), and navigate to the tools iso location and pick it.

This should autostart the vmware tools installer, just install everything you need.

I didn't get a menu item added automatically in Windows 2000, so I made one manually, pointing to c:\program files\vmware\VMControlPanel.cpl which is the control panel, that lets you do things like shrink your vmware player image.

6. In your guest system, run setup.exe from the VMware Tools directory.[/quote]

You can get the bundle packages here: www.vmware.com/download/ws/
requires a vmware account, but that's worth getting anyway. I'd put in a direct link to the bundle file, but I think it's best to use the latest ones, which will change now and then.
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