If you tried to install last Microsoft Windows Vista build (5600 aka RC1) on VMware Workstation 5.5.2 instead of Server 1.0.1 you sadly discovered the setup process hungs on Windows is loading files. It's nothing unexpected since Vista is still not supported on Workstation 5.5.x. Anyway a VMware user posted a simple solution on VMTN Forums: just edit the virtual machine configuration file (.vmx) to include:

svga.maxWidth = "640" svga.maxHeight = "480"

Other users already reported the trick works. Joel Spolsky finds odd Microsoft didn't verify compatibility with a so popular application like VMware Workstation. I don't have enough elements at the moment to further comment on this, but there are two important points I would like to underline:

• it's univerally clear Microsoft is not considering this Release Candidate as a test-for-shipment product. So everybody should behave accordingly, accepting Vista is still breaking compatibility with major applications at this point.
• if Microsoft is trying to distrurb VMware work (which I sincerely don't believe) would have planned such joke for RTM build timeframe

Sometimes an error is just an error.