VMWare Tech support was stumped as well, we collaborated searching Google, lol!
Ends up it had "something" to do with my VC Redistributions. It was not easy (many, many reboots, and failures), but I finally was able to re-install vcredistx86 and vcredistx64, and after that, the software installed.
My going assumption is that one of them was not "up to date" and VMware tried and failed (based on how difficult it was to do so manually) to update it...so it just dumped that error message. After I was able to update them, it worked.
If you are having similar trouble updating them, I recommend:
- Make sure to disable all possible startup programs
- Even if the install/update/uninstall fails, reboot. It may have actually worked or mostly worked.
- Keep trying until you see it reinstalled in add/remove programs...then try VMware again.
Hope this helps the next person!