I got Vista RC1 running with a VMWare Workstation 5.5 virtual machine today. The graphical install doesn't work with VMWare out of the box (it sticks on the initial "loading files" screen).

Fortunately echelon9 posted a workaround on the VMWare forums.

1. Stop the virtual machine.


2. Edit the virtual machine's VMX file to include the lines (bottom of the file is fine):
   

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

   
   


3. Start the virtual machine. It will be stuck in VGA mode and the colors are limited so it won't look too hot, but the install should proceed just fine.


4. Once your VM is booted into Vista, install VMWare Tools from the VM menu.


5. Stop the virtual machine and remove the two lines from the VMX that you added earlier.


6. Start the VM back up and you should be able to go into the Control Panel and change the resolution to something more usable.

Once you've done all that you can do the next most important thing: