I must be doing something wrong. that's the only thing I can figure. I can't install ANY linux o/s on a VM with this software. I've tried Fedora core 5, ubuntu 7x RedHat EL 4 and Ceno/s 4 and 5 They all have varrying differences. but for the most part the vm just locks up during the install. It stops responding. It does at different stages and since there's no error information pointed out there's nowhere to look. I've tried both ISO and physical CD and DVD with no success Is there a special process I need to use to do this? I'm running Vista Ultimate, have 4GB of ram and plenty of hard drive space. If there's a specific distro/version of linux that works best could someone help? FYI on the Centos install it simply blue screens me. On ubuntu the FIRST thing it does is present an error, then continues. then somewhere in the install it just simply stops. never at the same point.