Avast (latest version) is incompatible with vmware player.

I just wanted to raise awareness that for anyone that tries to install vmware player with Avast installed will be unable to do so. I am reporting this to Avast in case they are not aware of it. VMware is advising that people who have Avast on there system and having problems installing vmware player should uninstall Avast. .
If this could be looked into as to why this happens that would be great. I don’t know if this helps anyone at all but I thought I should report it.

Simply disabling all of Avasts shields does not fix this issue.

Steps to reproduce:

1.) Have Avast installed. (Latest version.)
2.) Download vmware player for Vista, Windows 7 or 8.
3.) Attempt to install vmware player. (latest version)

You will be met with ether 2 different kinds of errors from vmware when trying to install:

“Service VMware Authorization Service (VMAuthdService) failed to start.
Verify that you have sufficient privileges to start system services.”

“The MSI C:\users\A\Appdata\local\temp\vmwareplayer_x64.msi failed”.

See these threads for this issue:

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/451559?start=0&tstart=0
http://communities.vmware.com/message/2251989#2251989
http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=127045.0
http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=126795.0

Please note that after vmware player installation finishes and you restart, you are able to reinstall Avast and everything then works as normal.

[i]It was suggested by Spec8472 to do the following to fix this issue:

To solve this problem just uncheck “hardware virtualization” checkbox on Avast UI troubleshooting page. (reboot is required to propagate this setting change)

This did not work for me.[/i]

It seems that Avast’s sandboxing feature is launching vmware’s setup file, which is preventing it from making the changes it needs to make. The hardware virtualization setting is supposed to disable this, which is why the solution should work. But it does not seem to. At least for me.

After uninstalling Avast, and not changing anything else on my system, the install went right through with no problems.
I am hoping that by raising awareness the avast team could work with vmware to get this sorted out. I am available for logs and are willing to be a test subject if need be. :slight_smile:

Sorry for this problem, it will be fixed in next release.
To solve this problem just uncheck “hardware virtualization” checkbox on AvastUI troubleshooting page. (reboot is required to propagate this setting change)

Thanks

This actually worked for me.