Installing Tools or Guest Additions in a Terminal Server VM
January 26th, 2009 | 
Author: This post explains how to install the virtual machine tools or additions when running a virtualized Terminal Server. For example, if a VMware ESX virtual machine (VM) is providing published applications via Remote Desktops (RDP) from Microsoft Terminal Server then the normal process of installing the required VMware Tools will take place in a mode which assumes the tools need to be a published application in the user sessions. Since this is not the case, special steps must be taken to ensure the guest additions are installed for the local VM’s operating system only. Although I mentioned VMware Tools and MS Terminal Server, the process is similar for any Server Based Computing solution that provides published applications virtualized on any hypervisor platform.
I tried to keep this post generic as possible. This is a high level overview of preparing Windows for the tools or additions install.
Steps to correctly install guest tools or additions:
- Load the Tools or Addditions .iso file in your Terminal Server VM
- This is slightly different depending on the virtualization server, but most involve loading a virtual cd.
- Stop the autorun attempt to install the tools or additions
- Go to a cmd prompt and type “>change user /install“
- Now you can install your tools normally.
- “>change user /exec” will put you back to normal
Using Add/remove programs also uses change mode and allows a local application only install.
Here’s some other threads and posts about Terminal Servers running in VMs:
- VMware Communities: Installing VMware Tools on Terminal …
- VMware: Best practices for deploying Citrix on ESX
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John Howard – Hyper-V and virtualization blog : Terminal Services …
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