Mounting HGFS shares: [FAILED] error on booting Linux on VM ?

Sometimes you can see below error message while booting your Linux system on VMware and not able to mount your HGFS share.
Mounting HGFS shares: [FAILED]

You can try restarting your VMware tools service to check if it is now able to mount the hgfs share ?

[root@nglinux tmp]# service vmware-tools restart
Stopping VMware Tools services in the virtual machine:
   Guest operating system daemon:                          [  OK  ]
   VGAuthService:                                          [  OK  ]
   VMware User Agent (vmware-user):                        [  OK  ]
   Blocking file system:                                   [  OK  ]
   Unmounting HGFS shares:                                 [  OK  ]
   Guest filesystem driver:                                [  OK  ]
   VM communication interface socket family:               [  OK  ]
   VM communication interface:                             [  OK  ]
   Checking acpi hot plug                                  [  OK  ]
Starting VMware Tools services in the virtual machine:
   Switching to guest configuration:                       [  OK  ]
   Guest vmxnet fast network device:                       [  OK  ]
   VM communication interface:                             [  OK  ]
   VM communication interface socket family:               [  OK  ]
   Guest filesystem driver:                                [  OK  ]
   Mounting HGFS shares:                                   [FAILED]
   Blocking file system:                                   [  OK  ]
   VMware User Agent:                                      [  OK  ]
   Guest operating system daemon:                          [  OK  ]
   VGAuthService:                                          [  OK  ]
[root@nglinux tmp]# 

If not, then we need to check the log file if there is any error message:

# view /var/log/vmware-vmusr.log 
[Dec 19 02:45:01.002] [ message] [vmtoolsd] Plugin 'hgfsServer' initialized.
[Dec 19 02:45:01.003] [ message] [vix] QueryVGAuthConfig: vgauth usage is: 1
[Dec 19 02:45:01.003] [ message] [vmtoolsd] Plugin 'vix' initialized.
[Dec 19 02:45:01.040] [ message] [vmtoolsd] Plugin 'desktopEvents' initialized.
[Dec 19 02:45:01.040] [ warning] [Gtk] gtk_disable_setlocale() must be called before gtk_init()
[Dec 19 02:45:01.054] [ message] [vmtoolsd] Plugin 'dndCP' initialized.
[Dec 19 02:45:01.065] [ message] [vmtoolsd] Plugin 'resolutionSet' initialized.

If there are no error messages seen, then verify the path on .vmx file on windows if this is correct:

isolation.tools.hgfs.disable = "FALSE"
sharedFolder0.present = "TRUE"
sharedFolder0.enabled = "TRUE"
sharedFolder0.readAccess = "TRUE"
sharedFolder0.writeAccess = "TRUE"
sharedFolder0.hostPath = "C:\data-main\nglinux data"
sharedFolder0.guestName = "nglinux data"
sharedFolder0.expiration = "never"
sharedFolder.maxNum = "1"

You can find the vmx file path on VMWare main screen of the VM Machine.

If not, then correct the path, and then restart the vmware-tools service to resolve the issue.

If the path is also correct, then verify if /mnt/hgfs path exists inside your Linux VM. If not, then create it.

[root@nglinux ~]# ls -ld /mnt/hgfs
ls: cannot access /mnt/hgfs: No such file or directory
[root@nglinux ~]# mkdir -v /mnt/hgfs
mkdir: created directory `/mnt/hgfs'
[root@nglinux ~]# 

After creating, try restarting the vmware-tools service if issue is resolved ?

If not, then it means the package is not installed correctly on your initrd image and you need to re-install the vmware-tools package to resolve the issue.

Reinstalling your VMWare Tools package:

[root@nglinux vmware-tools-distrib]# ./vmware-install.pl 
A previous installation of VMware Tools has been detected.

The previous installation was made by the tar installer (version 4).

Keeping the tar4 installer database format.

You have a version of VMware Tools installed.  Continuing this install will 
first uninstall the currently installed version.  Do you wish to continue? 
(yes/no) [yes]