VMware Tools 12.4.0 Release Notes

VMware Tools 12.4.0 | 21 MAR 2024 | Build No 23259341 Check for additions and updates to these release notes.

What's New

• Updated OpenSSL version to 3.0.12.

• Updated zlib version to 1.3.

• Updated GLib version to 2.76.3.

• OpenGL 4.2 emulated x86/x64 support for Windows ARM guest operating systems.

Earlier Releases of VMware Tools

• For earlier releases of VMware Tools, see the VMware Tools Documentation page.

Before You Begin

• VMware Tools 12.4.0 supports the following guest operating systems:

  • windows.iso supports Windows 7 SP1 or Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 and later. 

    • The Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable package is a prerequisite for installing VMware Tools for Windows 12.4.0 and ships with the VMware Tools 12.4.0 download package. While preparing a Windows guest for installation, VMware Tools runs the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable Package installer which checks for the presence of a more recent version on the guest. If the guest has a more recent version already present, the package does not install.

      For a 32-bit Windows guest, the prerequisite version is Microsoft Visual C++ 2015-2022 Redistributable (x86) version 14.36.32532.0.

      For a 64-bit Windows guest, the prerequisite versions are Microsoft Visual C++ 2015-2022 Redistributable (x86) version 14.36.32532.0 and Microsoft Visual C++ 2015-2022 Redistributable (x64) version 14.36.32532.0.

      Refer to Microsoft's update KB2977003 for latest supported Visual C++ downloads.

    • Installing or upgrading to VMware Tools 12.4.0 is not supported for Windows versions that do not meet the prerequisite. Customers should use or upgrade to VMware Tools 11.0.6 until they can update their Windows OS to meet the prerequisites for VMware Tools 12.4.0.

    • Windows OS level prerequisites

      • Windows Server 2022

      • Windows 11

      • Windows Server 2019

      • Windows Server 2016

      • Windows 10

      • Windows Server 2012 R2 with Microsoft's update KB2919355

      • Windows 8.1 with Microsoft's update  KB2919355

      • Windows Server 2012 

      • Windows 8

      • Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 (SP1) with Microsoft's update KB4474419

      • Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1) with Microsoft's update KB4474419

  • windows.iso for Windows Arm supports Windows 10 1709 Arm 64-bit and later. 

    • For a Windows Arm guest, the prerequisite version is Microsoft Visual C++ 2022 Redistributable package (Arm64)- 14.36.32532.0. Refer to Microsoft's update KB2977003 for the latest supported Visual C++ downloads.

    • Installing or upgrading to VMware Tools 12.4.0 is not supported for Windows Arm versions that do not meet the prerequisite.

    • Windows OS level prerequisites

      • Windows 11 Arm

      • Windows 10 1709 Arm

  • For details on darwin.iso version, refer to VMware Tools 12.1.0 Release Notes.

  • For details on linux.iso, refer to VMware Tools 10.3.26 Release Notes.

  • For details on solaris.iso, refer to VMware Tools 10.3.10 Release Notes.

• VMware Tools ISO images are frozen for some end of life guest operating systems. Some ISO images are not included with ESXi in the tools-light VIB. For more details, see the VMware Tools Documentation page. All VMware Tools ISO images are available for download from https://customerconnect.vmware.com/home.

• VMware Tools for Windows: 32-bit and 64-bit installer executable (.exe) files are available for download. These files are provided for easier access and installation of VMware Tools in Windows guest operating systems.

• VMware Tools for Windows Arm: Installer executable (.exe) files are available for download.

Internationalization

VMware Tools 12.4.0 is available in the following languages:

• English

• French

• German

• Spanish

• Italian

• Japanese

• Korean

• Simplified Chinese

• Traditional Chinese

Product Support Notice

• VMware Tools 12.1.0 was the last regular release for Mac OS. Refer to KB 88698 for details. An updated darwin.iso 12.1.1 has been released to address a reported security vulnerability.

• The Windows pre-Vista ISO image for VMware Tools is no longer packaged with ESXi. The Windows pre-Vista ISO image is available for download only. For download information, see the Product Download page.

End of Feature Support Notice

• VMware Tools 12.4.0 is the last feature release for Windows 32-bit guest operating systems.

• VMware Tools 12.4.0 does not provide new driver versions for virtual machines running Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 guest operating systems. See Windows Guest Drivers Installed by VMware Tools.

• AppDefense support is removed from VMware Tools 12.0.0 version onwards.

• VMware Tools ships PVSCSI floppy images and PVSCSI drivers in Tools ISO for OS installation on a PVSCSI disk controller. The PVSCSI floppy images for supporting OS versions Vista, Server 2008, and Windows 7 are removed from VMware Tools 12.1.0 and later releases.

• "VMXNET 2 (Enhanced)" Network Adapter is not supported.

  For users who have configured a virtual machine with the "VMXNET 2 (Enhanced)" adapter running Windows Server 2008 R2 version of windows, switching to the VMXNET3 Network adapter is recommended.

• The Tar Tools (linux.iso) and OSPs shipped with VMware Tools 10.3.x release will continue to be supported. However, releases after VMware Tools 10.3.5 only include critical and security fixes. No new features are provided in these types of VMware Tools (Tar Tools and OSPs). Using open-vm-tools is recommended for the Linux distributions that provide open-vm-tools packages. For more information about open-vm-tools, see KB 2073803. For information on VMware Tools compatibility with guest operating systems, see KB 90203.

Compatibility Notes

• Starting with VMware Tools version 10.2.0, Perl script-based VMware Tools installation for FreeBSD has been discontinued. FreeBSD systems are supported only through the open-vm-tools packages directly available from FreeBSD package repositories. FreeBSD packages for open-vm-tools 10.1.0 and later are available from FreeBSD package repositories.

Guest Operating System Customization Support

The Guest OS Customization Support Matrix provides details about the guest operating systems supported for customization.

Interoperability Matrix

The VMware Product Interoperability Matrix provides details about the compatibility of current and earlier versions of VMware Products. 

Installation and Upgrades for This Release

VMware Tools can be downloaded from the Product Download page.

The steps to install VMware Tools vary depending on your VMware product and the guest operating system you have installed. For general steps to install VMware Tools in most VMware products, see General VMware Tools installation instructions (1014294).

To set up productLocker to point to the shared datastore, see KB 2004018.

This release provides packages to upgrade VMware Tools 11.2.5 or later deployments using GuestStore.

For specific instructions to install, upgrade, and configure VMware Tools, see the VMware Tools Documentation page.

Windows Guest Drivers Installed by VMware Tools

VMware Tools 12.4.0 provides the following driver versions for Windows 8 (32-bit/64-bit), Windows Server 2012, and later Windows operating systems:

Drivers	VMware Tools 12.4.0
Hardware Drivers
efifwfromhost.bin	1.0.0.0
pvscsi.sys	1.3.26.0
vmci.sys	9.8.18.0
vmmouse.sys	12.5.12.0
vmusbmouse.sys	12.5.12.0
vmxnet3.sys	1.9.14.0
vm3dmp.sys	9.17.07.0002
Software Drivers
vmhgfs.sys	11.0.44.0
vmmemctl.sys	7.5.7.0
vmrawdsk.sys	1.1.7.0
vnetWFP.sys	12.2.0.0
vsepflt.sys	12.4.0.0
vsock.sys	9.8.19.0
Security DLL
vmwsu.dll	2.5.1.0

VMware Tools 12.4.0 provides the following driver versions for Windows Arm:

Hardware Drivers	VMware Tools 12.4.0
vmusbmouse.sys	12.5.13.0
vmxnet3.sys	1.9.14.0
vm3dmp.sys	9.17.07.0003

Starting with VMware Tools 12.4.0 and later, the driver versions for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 remain unchanged. For information about the driver versions, refer to VMware Tools 12.3.5 Release Notes.

Resolved Issues

• When you install VMware Tools 12.3.0 or later with NSX Guest Introspection components on a Windows VM, an information message appears inside the taskbar

  When you install VMware Tools 12.3.0 or later with NSX Guest Introspection components on a Windows virtual machine, the NSX Distributed Malware Prevention icon appears inside the taskbar, and you might see the following message “Protection lost with VMware NSX Distributed Malware Prevention Service”.

  For more information, see the VMware KB article 95309.

  This issue is resolved in this release.

Known Issues

• VMware Tools Issues

VMware Tools Issues

The issues described in this section are not applicable to Windows Arm.

• The VMware Tools administrative installation (setup.exe /a) in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 guest operating systems extracts the Windows 8 vsepumc.dll into the same extraction folder

  The VMware Tools administrative installation (setup.exe /a) in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 guest operating systems extracts the Windows 8 vsepumc.dll (part of Guest Introspection components) into the same extraction folder.

  When you run the VMware Tools administrative installer, the Windows 8 build is copied after the Windows 7 build at the same extraction location replacing the Windows 7 vsepumc.dll. There is no impact on installations as the correct vsepumc.dll is installed.

  Workaround: If you want to change only vsepumc.dll on Windows 7 from its installed version, contact customer support.

Known Issues from Previous Releases

• VMware Tools Issues
• VMware Tools Issues on Windows Arm

VMware Tools Issues

• Memory leak when running the Ortec application

  When you run the Ortec application, you might experience an increase in memory usage and see a memory error.

  Workaround: To avoid this issue, set the system environment variable to zero - SVGA_ALLOW_LLVMPIPE=0

• Shared Folders mount is unavailable on Linux VM

  If the Shared Folders feature is enabled on a Linux VM while it is powered off, the shared folders mount is not available on restart.

  Note: This issue applies to VMware Tools running on Workstation and Fusion.

  If the VM is powered on, disable and enable the Shared Folders feature from the interface. To resolve the issue permanently, edit /etc/fstab and add an entry to mount the Shared Folders automatically on boot.

  For example, add the line:

  vmhgfs-fuse   /mnt/hgfs    fuse    defaults,allow_other    0    0

  For more information on how to configure VMware Tools Shared Folders, see KB 60262.

• VMware Tools upgrade fails on Windows 7 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 without SHA-2 code signing support

  Microsoft has changed Windows driver signing to use the SHA-2 algorithm exclusively starting December 3, 2019. Legacy Windows systems without SHA-2 code signing support fail driver signature verification.

  Refer to KB 78708.

• Installation of Windows Vista, Server 2008, or Windows 7 fails in a virtual machine

  Installing a Windows OS Vista, Server 2008, or Windows 7 in a virtual machine with a boot disk on a PVSCSI controller, fails to install the required PVSCSI driver.

  Download the VMware Tools package version 11.1.5 from https://customerconnect.vmware.com/, extract the contents, and use the VMware Tools windows.iso or the floppies for Windows OS Vista or Server 2008.

  Note:

  Users managing ESXi hosts or having a requirement to perform multiple installations of the same Windows OS version on a PVSCSI controller, can see the steps outlined in KB 84200.

• ICMP related IDFW rules not working

  After upgrading to VMware Tools 12.0.0 version, NSX-IDFW users can find that ICMP-related IDFW rules are not working as expected.

  This problem occurs because from VMware Tools 12.x.x version release onwards, ICMP filtering is disabled by default due to an ICMP packet loss issue. Refer to KB 88273 for enabling registry settings to enable ICMP filtering.

• VMware Tools upgrade failed with error code 1072 (The specified service has been marked for deletion.)

  When upgrading VMware Tools to a new version, if the previous version's VMware Tools service is not deleted completely, this incomplete service removal causes installing the new VMware Tools version service to fail and leads to a fatal error for the upgrade.

  When detecting an incomplete service removal to prevent VMware Tools upgrade from failing catastrophically every time, the new service creation will pause and retry to see if the condition clears. The VMware Tools installer will pause for up to 2 1/2 minutes. After this, a fatal error will occur. If the condition clears, the upgrade creates the new service and continues.

  For more information, see KB 84269.

  Workaround: Reboot the Windows system and restart VMware Tools install.

• After upgrading to a new version of VMware Tools with an installer parameter to remove the NetworkIntrospection feature, the old version of the vnetflt or vnetWFP driver service continues to run

  After the upgrade, the NetworkIntrospection feature is not present in the system's VMware Tools MSI database, but the feature's vnetflt or vnetWFP driver service still exists.

  Refer to KB 78016. 

  Note: This issue applies to VMware Tools upgrades from versions older than 11.1.0 only.

• Installing or upgrading versions earlier than VMware Tools 10.3.0 to VMware Tools 11.1.x might take longer and Windows OS might need a restart

  The installation process might appear to be in progress and display a message similar to the following:​ "Preparing 'VMware Tools' for installation..."

  During this process, the user might be prompted to restart the operating system. 

  For more information, see KB 55798.

VMware Tools Issues on Windows Arm

• Windows Arm VMs encounter either BSOD with DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION or hang

  Typically, with 3D games or resizing a remote desktop on VMware Tools 12.3.0, Windows Arm VMs encounter either BSOD with DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION or hang.

  You can disable 3D acceleration in VM settings. For more information, see KB 95283.