VMware vSphere Client is a client tool to manage VMware ESX and its VMs. It’s a basic but essential tool I need to manage my Virtual environment. But when I tried to install it on my Windows 8 machine, this is what I got.
This product can only be installed on Windows XP Sp2 and above
Well, Windows 8 is above XP SP2, isn’t it? Not sure who to blame but I guessed that a workaround would be needed to get me over this silly error.
And here is how.
1. Assume you already have the executable installation file, extract the content out of it to a folder. If you have 7Zip installed, you can simply right click the executable file, go to 7Zip, and choose Extract to folder name.
2. Go to the extracted folder, bin sub-folder, right click VMware-viclient.exe and choose Properties. Go to Compatibility tab, and check the option “Run this program in compatibility mode for” and pick Windows 7 from the list.
3. click OK to save the setting, and launch VMware-viclient.exe to start the installation again.
Woola…that’s the workaround that saved my day. It works on my vSphere 4.1 but according to here, it works on 5.0 as well.
/update on April 26, 2013/
If you are running vSphere 5.0., there is an update that has been released lately that should work fine on Windows 8. Check this post for the vSphere client download links.
Sorry this solution doesn’t work. After I follow the instructions exactly I still get the same error “product can only be installed on xpsp2 and above”
hmm…that’s odd. It definitely works. Maybe the UAC is blocking you from running it?
Steps above worked for me!
Any idea if they’re going to release a Metro app?
I had to sign in as a user with Admin rights on the machine – running as administrator did not seem to work for me. I was able to do it with UAC on however.
But it doesn’t work !! if i start it and open a console windows it say’s: VMRC console is disconnected. Install works but not all the functions. Please test before posting.
It does in fact trick it into thinking that it is running on a windows 7 platform, however the VRMC console does not load. You need to update the vsphere client to 5.1 and that will fix every issue.
It works, only if you choose Windows XP SP2 from the compatibility list instead of Windows 7…
This method worked just fine for me. Thank you!
VMware vSphere Client v5.0 Update 2 is out. It works with Windows 8.
http://blog.empirion.co.uk/vmware/vmware-vsphere-client-direct-download-links/
Awesome, man.
Thank you very much sir its done
Rather than extract and change compatibility level. Simply click on the exe file a second time, win8 will note it had problems installing and ask you if you want to run it in capability mode. select yes and it will install and work correctly.
For those still stuck on 5.0, this is what worked in my situation: 1>Disabling UAC 2> Disabling Admin Approval Mode in the Local Security Policy 3>The compatibility fix in this article 4>Manually extracting the installer[7zip] 5>Pre-installing .NET 3.5 and J# 6>Running the installer in an elevated prompt 7>Long sigh.
Ty.
The original link posted by Keith below for the Vsphere client download links has changed – it’s now http://www.empirion.co.uk/vmware/vmware-vsphere-client-direct-download-links/ ! Cheers T