I spent a day building a Windows 2003 32 bit image, after having issues with VMWare Workstation on the 64 bit version. This solved my problems.
I've been a firm supporter of VMWare on the job, but the 64 bit product doesn't work as advertised. One of the major benefits of the 5.5 release is the ability to run 64 bit and 32 bit VMs side by side, but it sppears the product was shipped untested or at least insufficiently tested on 64 bit Windows hosts.
What irks me is that VMWare either hasn't realized there is a problem, or isn't addressing it. It's bad PR for a company the size of EMC to ignore significant bug reports in their user forums. There is a lot of competition coming into this space, and VMWare is going to have a difficult time maintaining their market leading position as both Xen and Microsoft ramp up their offerings.