How to build VMWare image for VMWare Player free of charge

Very good howto is available at this link.

Here is copy of this article ...

If you haven't done so yet, download the Free VMware Player.

Next, you need the qemu-img.exe program that comes with QEMU. If you are using Windows (like I do) you can download QemuInstall-0.7.2.exe. After downloading this program, install it. Start a command prompt and go to the installation directory of QEMU, for example:

cd C:\Program Files\Qemu

and create a VMware disk file as follows:

C:\Program Files\Qemu>qemu-img.exe create -f vmdk WindowsXPPro.vmdk 2G
Formating 'WindowsXPPro.vmdk', fmt=vmdk, size=2097152 kB

A file "WindowsXPPro.vmdk" with a maximum disk size of 2G (the actual file is much smaller about 320 KB) has been created. You might want to move this file to a different folder.

Note: I have made several empty VMware virtual disk files of various sizes available as a single 21 KB download.

Now, create an empty text file, and rename it to "WindowsXPPro.vmx" (use the same name as in the previous step, but use vmx as the extension instead). Open the file in an editor and enter the following values:

config.version = "8"
virtualHW.version = "3"
ide0:0.present = "TRUE"
ide0:0.filename = "WindowsXPPro.vmdk"
memsize = "64"
MemAllowAutoScaleDown = "FALSE"
ide1:0.present = "TRUE"
ide1:0.fileName = "auto detect"
ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-raw"
ide1:0.autodetect = "TRUE"
floppy0.present = "FALSE"
ethernet0.present = "TRUE"
usb.present = "TRUE"
sound.present = "TRUE"
sound.virtualDev = "es1371"
displayName = "Windows XP Pro"
guestOS = "winXPPro"
nvram = "WindowsXPPro.nvram"
MemTrimRate = "-1"

ide0:0.redo = ""
ethernet0.addressType = "generated"
uuid.location = "56 4d 5c cc 3d 4a 43 29-55 89 5c 28 1e 7e 06 58"
uuid.bios = "56 4d 5c cc 3d 4a 43 29-55 89 5c 28 1e 7e 06 58"
ethernet0.generatedAddress = "00:0c:29:7e:06:58"
ethernet0.generatedAddressOffset = "0"

tools.syncTime = "TRUE"
ide1:0.startConnected = "TRUE"

uuid.action = "create"

checkpoint.vmState = ""

Insert your Windows XP Professional CD ROM, and double click on the file you just created. The VMware Player should boot the CD, and you can install Windows XP Pro.
Windows XP Pro up and running in a virtual machine
Windows XP Pro up and running in a virtual machine

Other versions of Windows
I first tried to install Windows 2000 Professional. When I got the installation process running I stopped the virtual machine, because I wanted to try XP. The value of guestOS was set to "windows2000pro" in the vmx configuration file.