I thought some people here might like to know what we just found out while trying to get VMWare running under CentOS 5. Before we found the note about changing VMWare from 2 to 1 CPU's, we went to `Edit' -> `Preferences' -> `Memory' and changed the memory option to:
Fit All virtual memory into reserved host RAM
It had been set to the next option down, second out of 3 (we don't have the system any more to see what it said word for word). This had a HUGE effect on performance. Before the change, it would take several minutes to do anything under VMWare. Startups and shutdowns were dog slow. Turning off the swap options helped a lot. After that, we also changed from 2 to 1 CPU's and that helped a little bit, but the memory option change had the biggest effect. Just thought you might like to know.