Sometimes you may notice that your customization of a VM fails when you provision VM from template or import it from vSphere; for example Computer Name may not be changed or IP address can not be assigned.

There are a couple of documents about troubleshooting guest operating system customization in VMware kb: for vCloud Director and vCenter. But none of them worked in my specific case, so I’m sharing something important in Windows OS’s. This hint will be useful especially when you see this error in: C:\Windows\Temp\vmware-inc\guestcust.Log:
“Command Execution failed with exist code: 1, output: ‘The service can not be started.’ ”

Since Windows administrators tend to disable some unnecessary services to harden security, we should know which services are necessary for VMware, if there is any. In fact, a number of Windows services should be enabled and started so that VMware customization works properly.  The necessary services are:

• DNS Client
• DHCP Client
• Workstation
• TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper

So, if you face the same issue, besides viewing Logs on VM, check these services as well.