Quote: "Since you've uncompressed the tools tar.gz file into /tmp, you should find the script here:
/tmp/vmware-tools-distrib/bin/vmware-uninstall-tools.pl
It ought to do the uninstall for you, and then running the install script won't complain about an existing install."
I know it's an old thread but I had exactly the same problem after an aborted upgrade. Thanks for the tip - that fixed it for me as well.