- Vmware Failed To Install The Hcmon Driver Windows 10 Pro
- Vmware Client Failed To Install Hcmon Driver Windows 10
- Vmware Workstation Failed To Install Hcmon Driver Windows 10
- Vmware Failed To Install The Hcmon Driver Windows 10 Bootable
In vSphere 6.5 and some simultaneous updates to earlier versions, VMware moved away from NPAPI (since Google is set on killing it) and instead introduced two new consoles, the HTML5 browser console which is quite frankly horrible (especially without VMTools), as well as a new “thick” console that installs on the client machine called VMware Remote Console. This is a welcome development, as moving away from NPAPI can’t come a day too soon, and anything that isn’t Flash based is always nice.
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. VMware Remote Console on Windows 10 gives ‘Failed to install the hcmon driver’ 2016-08-08 by Jason Trying to install the VMware Remote Console software on a new Windows 10 computer consistently resulted in the error message ‘Failed to install the hcmon driver.’. The VMware Labs flings monthly for January 2021: Happy New Year; How to not forward CTRL+WIN+Left, CTRL+WIN+Right shortcuts to guest Win7, but use the host’s Win10 “virtual windows” left/right swap function? VMware player 16 crashing on Linux host and locking up the entire machine. VMware Workstation Pro 16 cannot be.
There’s only one problem, the install frequently fails on Windows 10.
The error VMRC throws is quite cryptic as well; “Failed to install hcmon driver”. This is usually because the VMRC installer fails to play nicely with UAC in Windows, and for some reason doesn’t manage to get the required permissions from the OS to install the hcmon driver (which seems to be a virtual USB something that you’ll probably never need anyway). The workaround is quite simple, give it the required permissions from the get-go, so that it can bypass UAC altogether. The normal way to do this would be to right-click the installer and select “Run as Administrator”. However, I’ve not managed to get this to work on any machine I’ve tried it on.
The way that works on the other hand that I’ve found, is to open up an elevated PowerShell prompt and call the installer from there.
Navigate to the directory where you downloaded the VMRC installer, type in (and tab-complete) the name of the installation package, and press enter. After this, the install should continue smoothly.
Categories: Tech, vmware
So you are installing VMRC, PowerCli or vSphere client and getting that really annoying HCMON driver failed to install error, but have no idea where to start?
This article will :
- outline what causes the HCMON driver error
- provide top 3 solutions to this annoying problem.
Vmware Failed To Install The Hcmon Driver Windows 10 Pro
What causes the HCMON driver error
The HCMON drive is a virtual USB driver HCMon is a virtual USB driver to allow the connection of your physical USB ports to virtual machines. 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.
*Note: Several of the following recommendations will reduce the security level of your machine, make sure you understand the implications of doing so. *
Solution 1 - Install “as adminstrator”
If you have administrator access to the PC you are installing on, the first thing to try is to simply right click what you are trying to install and select Run as Administrator. If you don’t have access you’ll have to consult your administrators.
You probably already did this though right? Next…
Solution 2 - Set Lumension Endpoint Security to allow the HCMON driver
LES is a really popular product among organisation s that want to have granular control of what information can be introduced and removed from their environment. Think disallowing or restricting USB access. You could just disable or uninstall LES, but that kind of defeats the purpose of what it’s trying to achieve. Good news, there is a reg setting that LES uses to allow HCMON to be used.
Note you'll need access to the registry and the ability to edit it to do this.
Vmware Client Failed To Install Hcmon Driver Windows 10
- Enable HCMON by creating a EnableHCMON registry value (DWORD type, Data 1) in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesSKParameters.
- Reboot if required.
- Install VMWare Client/PowerCli.
- Disable HCMON by removing the EnableHCMON registry value.
- Reboot the endpoint again.
Vmware Workstation Failed To Install Hcmon Driver Windows 10
Ensure you have the right version of the .NET framework for the product you are installing
Different products need different .NET versions for example as per KB-2053281 vSphere 5.1 client requires Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5.1. Make sure you are using the right version, I usually don’t find this to be a problem most products will check for dependencies and either announce it’s not there or go ahead and install it for you.
Beware of an intermittent known feature issue in vSphere 6
Thought I have never had this issue it is important to know about the issue outlined in KB-2130850. Apparently when attempting to install the VMRC for vSphere 6 on a PC which already has some versions of the vSphere client the install will fail. The recommended fix is to uninstall all versions of the vSphere client, reboot, install the VMRC client and then reinstall the vSphere Client (does anyone still use the old vSphere Client?
I hope you have my luck and never have to do this either, as it sounds messy.
So now you know what the HCMON driver is, why sometimes it causes issues, and how to get around the more commonly known ones.
Hope this was of some help.
Vmware Failed To Install The Hcmon Driver Windows 10 Bootable
Let me know if you encounter anything different or if this helped you out.