Don't you have another Windows-VM or a BartPE which you could use to change that setting ?
I doubt that it will crash because of any HAL-issues. WS 3 VMs used a different hal than VMware uses today but you can start them without problems.
Very likely its a BSOD 7b - missconfigured mass-storage ...
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Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...
