I can see how old this post is, but I noticed something relevant; it wasn't even Ubuntu. Apparently "Shared folders" must be enabled prior to installing open-vm-tools - also had open-vm-tools-desktop already installed and nothing worked. Reinstalling both packages does the job, seemingly when shared folder were enabled; this works instantly.

sudo apt-get reinstall open-vm-tools open-vm-tools-desktop

I'd assume that when enabling "shared folder" before the OS install, it should work out of the box.

I can see how old this post is, but I noticed something relevant; it wasn't even Ubuntu. Apparently "Shared folders" must be enabled prior to installing open-vm-tools - also had open-vm-tools-desktop already installed and nothing worked. Reinstalling both packages does the job, seemingly when shared folder were enabled; this works instantly. With apt-get:

sudo apt-get install open-vm-tools open-vm-tools-desktop --reinstall

Or with dnf:

sudo dnf reinstall open-vm-tools open-vm-tools-desktop

I'd assume that when enabling "shared folder" before the OS install, it should work out of the box.

I can see how old this post is, but I noticed something relevant; it wasn't even Ubuntu. Apparently "Shared folders" must be enabled prior to installing open-vm-tools - also had open-vm-tools-desktop already installed and nothing worked. Reinstalling both packages does the job, seemingly when shared folder were enabled; this works instantly.

sudo apt-get reinstall open-vm-tools open-vm-tools-desktop

I can see how old this post is, but I noticed something relevant; it wasn't even Ubuntu. Apparently "Shared folders" must be enabled prior to installing open-vm-tools - also had open-vm-tools-desktop already installed and nothing worked. Reinstalling both packages does the job, seemingly when shared folder were enabled; this works instantly.

sudo apt-get reinstall open-vm-tools open-vm-tools-desktop

I'd assume that when enabling "shared folder" before the OS install, it should work out of the box.