just a few minutes ago i tried to upgrade vmware tools on a windows 2008 vm. the older version of vmware tools didn’t uninstall correctly. and i couldn’t install the newer version without a clean removal. repair on the MSI didn’t work either.

searching revealed that this is a known problem. running “setup /c” from cmdline will cleanup old reg keys.

the exact error message noted something like “error 1316…etc” (sorry already closed it out).

vmware knowledgebase article:
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1012693