I tried beos on VMWare too, but without any luck (with almost the same problems you reported about accessing the virtual disk) now I run BeOSMax (ver.3 beta1) in Microsoft Virtual PC (unfortunately that's the only way I can use Beos, because of driver issues) and I have to admit it works without a glitch :) I was already running Debian in VPC, and I decided to use a part of the linux "virtual" hard disk for beos, then, I rebooted the vm, plugged the cd (well, since burning a CD costs time and money, I used the iso image directly :), then the IdeReplacement floppy (again, just the image), booted from there, followed the instructions... et voilà, BeOS up and running! The display was still grayscale only, until sys2 ( ehi, thanks again :* ) suggested to copy /boot/home/config/settings/kernel/drivers/sample/vesa to /boot/home/config/settings/kernel/drivers/vesa, that done, I had a beautiful 800x600@16 bits color virtual display :D The clock still runs like hell, but, well, who cares ? Hope this can help, Paolo (btw, good to see other italian BeOS users :)