You may receive this error when installing vCenter Single Sign-On. You may see something similar to this in %TEMP%\vminst.log:
VMware Single Sign On-build-941610: 01/16/13 15:00:01 RunSSOCommand:: error code returned is 255 while launching C:\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\SSOServer\utils\rsautil.cmd
VMware Single Sign On-build-941610: 01/16/13 15:00:01 Posting error message 20003
The solution in my case was to browse to the directory where VMware was installed (default C:\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure) and rename the JRE folder to something else. Make sure you have vCenter services stopped before attempting to rename the JRE folder. Once that’s done, install SSO. Do not worry about renaming the folder because your next step should be to install the Inventory Service and then vCenter which will replace the JRE folder.