Run Windows XP on Ubuntu using VMware Server

I have Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy installed and would like to run Windows XP Professional as well.
Followed instructions in
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=183209&highlight=Windows+%28XP%29+on+Ubuntu+with+VMWare+Server
to install the free vmware server and vmware tools.

There was a problem with freezing of vmware every few minutes, which fixed itself after a couple of minutes. This only happened while I was using IE6 (SP2) and does not occur with Firefox 2.

The sound device does not appear in the VM preferences console so at the moment sound does not work.

After a while, I started to get the message
"can't open file /home/paul/.vmware/preferences" when I start the console. Of course it opens if I sudo vmware.
This error is reported in
http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=603229&tstart=0
and by changing preferences as discussed there, the problem is fixed.
Of course, this does not explain how it happened in the first place.

I set up networking and found that to share folders between computers on a router, the VM networking has to be set up as "bridging" rather than "NAT". I think in the latter case you can only share between virtual machines on the same host.

3D desktop effects using Beryl with Ubuntu

I installed Beryl with AIGLX as described in
http://wiki.beryl-project.org/index.php/Install/Ubuntu/Edgy/AiGLX

It didn't work, because I needed to install the nvidia drivers for my graphics card (nVidia GEforce 7600) by following the instructions for installing the nVIDIA driver - second method (installing official package) here:

http://wiki.beryl-project.org/wiki/Install_Beryl_on_Ubuntu_Edgy_with_nVidia#Installing_the_nVIDIA_Driver

Beryl started successfully when I typed beryl at a command line.

However, when I booted, X did not start, and an error message indicated an API mismatch error on restarting Ubuntu. As described at the link above, I added "nv" to the restricted modules in
/etc/default/linux-restricted-modules-common.

Note that after installing the nvidia driver, there is useful information about the installation in:
/usr/bin/nvidia-installer/README.txt

The X log file is in /var/log/Xorg.0.log

and the config file is in /etc/X11/xorg.conf