I have been trying to fix this for hours now with no help. The version is VMware-player-5.0.1-894247 on Windows 8 Pro. I am Administrator on this account.
I tried redirecting %TMP% to c:\temp == didn't help
I tried installing on Command prompt as an administrator with the /z switch = /z "action="install" ======= Didn't help
Did the /x ...didn't help either.
Even managed to get a portable Vmware but that failed to open the image file as the file paths aren't there.
I copied the msi, ran the instEd MSI editor to run the vmwareplayer_x86.msi file on it own, it failed on hcmon driver unable to start. There are no help for this issue as well.
Attaching the log file,