Workstation says VMware Tools is not running in this virtual machine - and suddenly the display will not resize, the mouse feels trapped, and shutting down from the menu does nothing. Tools is the guest's half of VMware. When it stops, half the product stops with it. Here is how to bring it back properly.
VMware Tools is not one program - it is a service plus a set of drivers inside the guest. When Workstation reports it as not running, the cause is one of four things: the service stopped, the install is damaged, the version mismatches your Workstation, or it was never installed at all. The video troubleshoots Tools directly, and the steps below follow the same logic - check first, reinstall cleanly second, and never download a random Tools installer from the internet.
Start with the VM menu label. Install VMware Tools means it is absent entirely. Update or Reinstall means Workstation believes it exists. Then verify inside the guest instead of trusting the menu: on Windows, open services.msc and find the VMware Tools service. If it is stopped, try starting it and note any error - an error message here is worth more than an hour of guessing.
If the service starts when you click it but is dead again after every reboot, its startup type is the problem. Open the service properties and set Startup type to Automatic, then start it. This one setting silently fixes VMs where Tools "never works after I restart" - the service was installed fine, just never told to run.
A Tools install damaged by an interrupted update will not heal itself. Do it the clean way:
For Linux guests, skip the old CD-image and tarball routine entirely. Install open-vm-tools from your distribution's own repository - plus open-vm-tools-desktop on desktop guests - then reboot. Verify with systemctl status open-vm-tools; it should report active and running. This is the build VMware itself recommends for Linux, and it updates through your normal system updates, so it cannot silently drift out of date the way a manual install does.
Honest limit: if a clean reinstall still will not stay running, the problem is usually not Tools itself. An ancient guest OS on a brand-new Workstation, or the reverse, can mismatch beyond what Tools can bridge - update Workstation first. A guest loaded with leftover driver-cleaner damage may also refuse. The VM's vmware.log file, in the VM folder on the host, records what the virtual hardware was doing - reading it is the last step, not the first.
The video troubleshoots VMware Tools on a live machine - watch how quickly the display, mouse and clipboard come back once the service runs.
Watch Full VideoIt is the open-source build of the same guest components, maintained with VMware's involvement and recommended by VMware for Linux guests. Functionally it delivers the same display, clipboard and time sync features, with the bonus that your Linux updates keep it current automatically.
A short delay is normal - the service starts as the guest finishes booting, and Workstation updates its status shortly after. If it still shows as not running several minutes later, or features like screen resizing never start working, treat it as a real fault and follow the reinstall steps.
You can, and for a throwaway test VM many people do. But you give up the proper display driver, clipboard sharing, drag and drop, shared folders, accurate time sync and clean shutdown from the menu. For any VM you actually work in, Tools is three minutes well spent.