VMWare Workstation 4.5.2

1. Start VMWare Workstation.
2. Select menu item: File -> New Virtual Machine...
3. Choose a Typical Configuration, Microsoft Windows, Longhorn (experimental).
4. Choose your network connection.  (I chose Bridged)
5. Choose disk capacity.  (I chose 20GB, unallocated)
6a. Insert your Microsoft Vista Beta 1 DVD disc and boot from the dvd.
OR
6b. Mount the MSDN ISO as the CD drive.

During the installation the video color depth is 4 bits resulting in color dithering making it difficult to read text on the screen.
Installation seemed to lock up a couple times where the mouse cursor would not moved for about a minute or so, but it recovered fine.

After the 1st reboot (there are 2) during the installation which occurs when the progress bar is about 50%, the progress bar becomes more of an activity bar so you can't guage how much longer the install will take.
From the start of the install it took 1 hour until the 2nd reboot, which finally boots into Window Vista.
After the system has rebooted, the Supplemental Driver Pack Installation Wizard runs... which for ended with "Drivers are unavailable for your devices."

Install VMWare Tools
 Do not install install the VMWare Tools from the VMWare Workstation VM menu as it does not work.
 You must edit the Virtual Machine Settings and mount the windows.iso cd image to a vm cd drive.
 
 VXMNet will fail to install, and although there are descriptions on how to fix this for version 5.0, I have not resolved the issue with 4.5.2.

 Once you reboot your video will be much better but you still don't have network or sound.
 
 I was not able to get the network driver to work even on a manual install so I don't know that 4.5.2 support it.
 

If you are using 5.0, here is a link on getting it to work: