Installed WS 6.5, now can't reinstall WS 4.5

[johnenglish]

I have (or had) a WS 4.5 installation on a WinXP host which I've been happily using for the past few years. Some niggling problems I've never solved (shared folders and copy/paste only seem to work with Windows guests and not Linux guests) but ah well. Then I thought I'd finally try WS 6.5 to see if it was any better. I installed an evaluation copy (which uninstalled 4.5) but it wouldn't let me start any of my VMs without a registration key. Oh well, I thought, I'll just forget it and reinstall 4.5.

4.5 reinstalled but wouldn't run. Turns out that it didn't uninstall 6.5 and I seemed to have both. I uninstalled 6.5 and tried to repair 4.5 but the installer failed. Now I can't remove, repair or reinstall 4.5, and I can't install any other version because "a version of VMware is already installed"...

Just to put the icing on the cake, I can't find my old 4.5 license key if I need to adopt a scorched earth policy and start from scratch.

Anyone got any ideas what I should do???

[johnenglish]

Just another data point for my problem: the uninstall goes through removing files, uninstalling USB driver, and seems to die at the point where it uninstalls the networking. Then it rolls back and cheerfully informs me that no changes have been made to my system.

[RDPetruska]

You can either run the installer with the /c switch to cleanup an aborted install/uninstall; or you can run the VMware-Cleaner utility found in knowledgebase article 1308.

As long as you registered your copy of Workstation, you can lookup your serial number for the older version on VMware's website: Support section, Access Support Tools, View Your Products.

[johnenglish]

Many thanks. The /c switch didn't work (same effect as before) but the KB article pointed me at a Windows uninstaller utility that did the trick (saved all the hassle of following the steps involved in manually cleaning the registry).

As for the license key, it doesn't show up in the View Your Products list. Fortunately the nice folks at VMware support sent me a copy of my key in response to a desperate email. My profound thanks to them and to you.