Ever try to install VMware Tools and after hours and hours the install won’t seem to complete and from the GUI Going to End VMware Tools Install doesn’t work. Well here is how you kill the install from the Console of the ESX Server your VM is running on.

First thing we need to do is get the ID of the VM.

[root@ESXSERVNAME ~]# /usr/bin/vmware-cmd /vmfs/volumes/data-storename/vm-folder/vmname.vmx getid
getid() = idnumber
[root@ESXSERVNAME ~]# /usr/bin/vmware-vim-cmd vmsvc/tools.cancelinstall idnumber

That’s it! You should now be able to manually install the tools on the VM.