Installing VMware View Agent or View Composer fails with the error: The system must be rebooted before installation can continue (1029288)

Symptoms:

• You cannot install VMware View Composer/Agent.
• Installing VMware View Composer/Agent fails.
• You see this error:
  
  The system must be rebooted before installation can continue
   
• Restarting the machine does not resolve this issue.

Possible cause?

This issue may occur if there are pending operations from previous installations.

 
Here's what I did to resolve my particular issue when trying to upgrade the View Composer from version 3.0 to 5.3 on the vCenter Server.

1. Reboot the guest operating system to clear the pending operations.
2. If the issue persists, try removing VMware Tools and re-installing it, then proceed to the next step if this does not resolve the issue.
3. Click Start > Run, type regedit, and click OK.
4. Look for these registry keys:
   
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\PendingFileRenameOperations

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\FileRenameOperations
   
   
5. If there is a string in either of these keys, delete the string.
6. Re-install VMware View Agent again.

Note: If this does not resolve the issue, you may need to delete any strings in these keys as well:

• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce\
OnceEx\
After deleting the strings, reboot the virtual machine and attempt to install the View Agent.