I am currently using a trial copy of VMWare Workstation 9, evaluating whether or not it will meet my needs. It is running on Windows 8 Pro RTM. Both Windows 8 and Workstation 9 are clean installs.
I've created a Windows XP (x86) guest and begun the process of Windows updates, etc. The problem comes in about half of the time when I restart the VM. Before Windows even starts loading, while the VMWare logo is still visible, the guest will freeze. At this point the CPU utilization of the System process on the host will begin consuming 100% of one logical processor on the host. I can attempt stopping the guest, unsuccessfully. Only rebooting the host seems to free up the CPU.
I'm not sure where to even begin troubleshooting this. Any thoughts?