Had a strange issue where clients to a RDS Host server were not able to open hyperlinks from Outlook or Word documents.  When clicking a hyperlink Windows would attempt to open it with VMWare Tools instead of the web browser despite what setting was present in default programs.

It turns out that when VMTools is installed to a VMWare Virtual Machine it will create a URL Association that hijacks the default URL handler.  The fix is as follows:

Open regedit on the affected virtual machine.

Navigate to

HKLM\SOFTWARE\VMware, Inc.\VMwareHostOpen\Capabilities\UrlAssociation

Remove the entries there.