I downloaded Windows XP Pro SP2 from MSDN. I created a new VM using the skip disk option, pointing Fusion 4.1.1 at the ISO I downloaded. Everything works well until the VM tries to boot. I get a brief flash of the standard text from VMWare as the VM boots then the VM screen blanks out and I get a cursor (_) at the top left of the screen. Nothing happens from that point on. I've verified that Fusion is using the ISO as the CD image.
Thinking it was a problem with ISO installs, I burned the contents of the ISO to a DVD using disk utility. Now when I try to create the VM, Fusion completely hangs when it tries to detect the OS installation disk. I get the little multi-colored spinner thingy and that's it. I have to force quit fusion.
I tried creating a CDR image from the DVD. Same result as with the ISO.
This is completely frustrating me. There are a million articles out there about installing stuff on Fusion 3 but nothing about 4 beyond the trivial happy path case. This operation should be so braindead simple but either my brain is worse that dead or there's some magic trick I can learn to force Fusion / Windows XP into cooperation.
Any thoughts?