During this last maintenance window for a customer, I needed to update and recompose their linked clones and then log in and test the various applications to make sure everything was working properly. After the recompose had completed, I fired up the View client only to be greeted with an error message that said “The View Connection Server connection failed (null).” This was obviously a problem. After some quick searches on the VMware KB, I found an article which states “View Client 4.5.0 or earlier fails to connect to View Connection Server if Internet Explorer 9 Beta or Windows 7 SP1 Beta is installed on the same client system.”
I had IE9 Beta installed. After removing it (and rebooting), the client connected up just fine and all was good again.