I have what seems to be the EXACT same problem, but on Fedora Core 6 and using VMware Server. As in your case, I received no indication of what's wrong other than that it just hangs for 5 minutes. Every time I triggered it, I was doing something with Internet Explorer.
I had a similar, 5-minute hang under Player a couple of times a few months ago, when I first started experimenting with it. However, in that case the guest image wasn't ever functional (probably due to the beta-ness of the VMware converter I used to create it) and I never made it into Windows, anyway. But I still got the "5 minute hang" a few times while trying to get into the "virtual BIOS".
The first couple of times it happened, I just shut the whole machine off thinking it was done. But then I realized it just sticks for 5 minutes. The cursor for the host OS (Fedora in my case) is stuck during that period as well; even though, as you say, the rest of the machine runs fine.
So the bottom line is, no answers from me; but at least you can know that someone else is having an identical problem. Aside from that and some clock issues, my VMware server is running fantastically. If the problem is limited to IE, then I'll probably just ignore it. But if it's networking in general, that could force me to try something else -- maybe even going with Mac servers running parallels, or a Windows Server host with Linux guest OS's.
Message was edited by:
mike1024
