Sometimes the boot screen of VMware does not appear or fades out too fast. The result is that you neigther can access the bios (F2) nor the boot menu (F12).
Solution: For VMware Workstation since Version 6 you can add the following two Options into your .vmx configuration file.
bios.bootDelay = "5000" bios.forceSetupOnce = "TRUE"
For VMware Infrastructure 3, Virtual Center 2 or VMware Server you should not use the external Console. It seems like the console reacts too slow.