VMWare Workstation 6.02 Immediately dies when trying to open a VM - Solved

[BWVCO]

I just installed Workstation 6.02 on Mandriva 2008. The there were no error messages during the install and Workstation comes up fine. I copied a VM folder over from an instance of Workstation 6.02 running on XP. The VM runs fine on XP. As soon as I select File/Open the Workstation program instantly shuts down. I tried to create a new VM but as soon as I select browse to select the folder to create the VM Workstation dies again. If I use the default folder location the VM is created successfully. I can't find a tool in Workstation proper to read program logs and I don't know where the program logs are kept that do not pertain to an individual VM. The folder I was going to browse to is /usr/local/vmware/vms1 which I used chmod 777 on.

[BWVCO]

Update - I ran the program from the command line as root. It died again when I tried to open an existing VM folder but gave the following message at the command line: # /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/gtk-2.0/2.10.0/filesystems/libgnome-vfs.so: undefined symbol: g_get_user_special_dir

[BWVCO]

The problem may be solved. I found this link on the net: http://blog.gnu-designs.com/vmware-undefined-symbol-g_get_user_special_dir-error-solved . When I entered VMWARE_USE_SHIPPED_GTK=no vmware & as root the program came up and appears to work normally. I am attempting to modify the kmenus so that it gets called that way via the gui. I will report success/failure.

[BWVCO]

I was not able to get the KDE menus to work correctly with the command string to launch Workstation. I was able to create an icon on the desktop using the suggested VMWARE_USE_SHIPPED_GTK=no vmware as the command string and it has worked perfectly so far. That's good enough for us to get going with.