VMWare Workstation/Player 8 Serial Port via Named Pipe as a client issues

I'm trying to connect the serial port I've added to my VM as a Named Pipe in client mode to a named pipe that is created on the host. The serial settings I'm using are:

serial2.present = "TRUE"

serial2.fileType = "pipe"

serial2.fileName = "\\.\pipe\com2"

serial2.pipe.endPoint = "client"

serial2.tryNoRxLoss = "TRUE"

I'm creating the named pipe in a perl script that works with other applications connecting to the named pipe server. When I connect the serial port in the VM in workstation or player I immediately get the following error.

serial2: The server process that created the "\\.\pipe\com2" named pipe did not set it up as expected by this program.

The device will be disconnected.

I'm not sure how VMware is expecting the named pipe to be set up and I have tried different options for creating it. Any suggestions would be most welcome.

Cheers