I tried to do an "End VMWare Tools Install" via the menu, but this was greeted by the message "The operation is not allowed in the current state."
At first I thought I needed to wait for my customer to reboot the machines at his convenience, but a colleague of mine knew the solution:
- Enable Remote Tech Support for the ESXi host where the machine is located (from Configuration > Security profile)
- Connect via SSH with root account
- Run the command: usr/bin/vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvms
- Take the VMid of the VM with the hanging install and then use the second command to cancel it: /usr/bin/vim-cmd vmsvc/tools.cancelinstall vmid
- Start an interactive VM tools installation and manually run it from the mounted CD
Thanks Paul ;-)