I finally got a chance to download Windows Vista RC1 from MSDN a few weeks ago, but didn't have a machine to install it on. I decided the candidate would be my Linux desktop at the office. After trying to get Vista to install a few times, I couldn't get past "Windows is loading files...", even after letting it go overnight. Today I had a few minutes while on a conf call and had a chance to poke around. The fix I found works and Vista was successfully installed.

The fix is to add the following to your .vmx file for Vista:

svga.maxWidth = "640"
svga.maxHeight = "480"

I found this information in the VMWare discussion forums.