Turned off automatic reboots so i'll try to see. By now i've seen the BSOD saying "IRQ not less or equal" or something like this. no modules or dlls were mentioned. I also experience crashes in applications running under virtual machine. Frequent candidate is Smalltalk VM which is doing lot of jitting and other "magic" things, but is rock solid under Windows. I saw svchost crashing from time to time etc. I will provide more information when it will become available. I'm very eager to cope with this asap, because my evaluation period is almost over.

Ok, I finally analyzed BSOD dumps. They seem rather random to me. I feel like i experience random application crashes and windows kernel itself is just another application. I noticed that application crash usually occurs when page in/page out counter in performance monitor goes up. Things i've noticed in vmware logs:

Nov 24 20:18:01.101: vmfusion| HardwareVersion::SetHardwareVersion: Invalid HW version: 1.
Nov 24 20:18:01.101: vmfusion| HardwareVersion::SetHardwareVersion: Invalid HW version: 1.
Nov 24 20:18:01.108: vmfusion| HardwareVersion::SetHardwareVersion: Invalid HW version: 1.
Nov 24 20:18:01.108: vmfusion| HardwareVersion::GetVMMaxMemory: Invalid HW version: 1.
Nov 24 20:18:01.108: vmfusion| HardwareVersion::SetHardwareVersion: Invalid HW version: 1.
Nov 24 20:18:01.108: vmfusion| HardwareVersion::GetVMMaxMemory: Invalid HW version: 1.
Nov 24 20:18:01.108: vmfusion| HardwareVersion::SetHardwareVersion: Invalid HW version: 1.
Nov 24 20:18:01.108: vmfusion| HardwareVersion::GetVMMaxMemory: Invalid HW version: 1.
Nov 24 20:18:01.109: vmfusion| AIOMGR-S : stat o=1140 r=2280 w=2 i=0 br=7587840 bw=1024

I turned on debug checks in vmware and it reports problems from time o time. But log file collected with support-tool is more then 10Mb in size, so i'm not sure what to do with them. Below are some examples of windows crashes as shown by windbg:

---

PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA (50)

KERNEL_MODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED_M (1000008e)

IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL (a)

ATTEMPTED_EXECUTE_OF_NOEXECUTE_MEMORY (fc)

BTW i checked memory on my iMac and it seems to be ok

Any ideas? I'm almost ready to give up with vmware or leopard

Thank you Dave, I'll give this idea a try. I have to mention that a good percentage of crashes occur even before WinXP completed booting.

"Upgrade Virtual Machine" is disabled (grayed). Virtual Machine has 256 Mb of memory. WinXP effectively runs itself only. Task manager currently states that 156420 КB allocated with peak value of 183780. This VM once had 512Mb at its disposal and this didn't seem to make any difference. Few more things from my logs:

11/26/07 4:41:12 PM 0x0-0x13013.com.vmware.fusion177 VIDE: (0x1f0) OUTB Cmd 0xb0, Unknown ATA Command on drive 0

Before i converted to IDE i had the same message for SCSI

11/26/07 4:40:05 PM 0x0-0x13013.com.vmware.fusion177 Balloon: Start: vmmemctl reset balloon

Hmm... Pantone Hue calibrator can possibly qualify as a "strange" device. I thought i have USB turned off in one of my previous machines, but here it was turned on. I don't need usb support anyway so i'm turning it off again. Just have explorer.exe crashed
I enabled DEP for anything in system btw. Here's vmx file

monitor=debug
config.version = "8"
virtualHW.version = "6"
scsi0.present = "TRUE"
memsize = "256"
MemAllowAutoScaleDown = "FALSE"
ide0:0.present = "TRUE"
ide0:0.fileName = "Windows XP Professional-000002.vmdk"
ide1:0.present = "TRUE"
ide1:0.autodetect = "FALSE"
ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-raw"
floppy0.present = "TRUE"
ethernet0.present = "TRUE"
ethernet0.connectionType = "bridged"
ethernet0.wakeOnPcktRcv = "FALSE"
usb.present = "TRUE"
ehci.present = "TRUE"
sound.present = "TRUE"
sound.fileName = "-1"
sound.autodetect = "TRUE"
pciBridge0.present = "TRUE"
isolation.tools.hgfs.disable = "FALSE"
displayName = "Windows XP Professional"
guestOS = "winxppro"
nvram = "Windows XP Professional.nvram"
deploymentPlatform = "windows"
virtualHW.productCompatibility = "hosted"
RemoteDisplay.vnc.port = "0"
tools.upgrade.policy = "upgradeAtPowerCycle"
powerType.powerOff = "soft"
powerType.powerOn = "soft"
powerType.suspend = "soft"
powerType.reset = "soft"

ide1:0.startConnected = "TRUE"
ethernet0.addressType = "generated"
uuid.location = "56 4d b9 47 ab f2 c4 a2-42 7d 97 cc 8c cd ba a4"
uuid.bios = "56 4d b9 47 ab f2 c4 a2-42 7d 97 cc 8c cd ba a4"
ide0:0.redo = ""
pciBridge0.pciSlotNumber = "17"
scsi0.pciSlotNumber = "16"
ethernet0.pciSlotNumber = "32"
sound.pciSlotNumber = "33"
ehci.pciSlotNumber = "34"
ethernet0.generatedAddress = "00:0c:29:cd:ba:a4"
ethernet0.generatedAddressOffset = "0"
ide1:0.fileName = "cdrom0"
tools.syncTime = "TRUE"

checkpoint.vmState.readOnly = "FALSE"
checkpoint.vmState = ""

floppy0.fileType = "file"
floppy0.fileName = "/Users/pavel/memtestp.fdd"
floppy0.clientDevice = "FALSE"

extendedConfigFile = "Windows XP Professional.vmxf"
sharedFolder.option = "onetimeEnabled"

sharedFolder0.present = "TRUE"
sharedFolder0.readAccess = "TRUE"
sharedFolder0.writeAccess = "TRUE"
sharedFolder0.hostPath = "/Users/pavel"
sharedFolder0.guestName = "pavel"
sharedFolder0.expiration = "never"
sharedFolder.maxNum = "1"

sharedFolder0.enabled = "TRUE"

floppy0.startConnected = "FALSE"