VMware: Intermittent Error: Unexpected character ‘’ (code 65279 / 0xfeff) in prolog; expected ‘<' at [row,col {unknown-source}]: [1,1] pop up in Windows vSphere client ?

Recently, I got the error below when using the vSphere client.

Problem:

I have only tested this solution on:

Solution:

Repair your installation of Microsoft Visual J#® 2.0 Redistributable Package – Second Edition (x64)

Download

The error went away after repair.

In trying to google the error some user have reported that uninstall the patch KB3147458 worked for them. I didn’t have the patch.

Hope this helps.