Virtual PC Images and VMware 6 for Linux

I ran into a few gotchas trying to run a Virtual PC image under
VMware. At one point I remember reading that VMware could run a VPC
image without any modifications. Unfortunately for me, this only works
with the Windows version and I only have a license for the Linux
version. So I did a little research and discovered that VMware has a
nifty conversion utility that transforms a VPC image into a VMware
image. Unfortunately it only runs under Windows. (Are you detecting a
theme here?) Under normal circumstances I would have given up at this
point, but I needed this image for a work project so I had to make it
work. In the end I had to install the conversion tool into one of my
existing Windows virtual machines, copy the VPC image to an area where
the virtual machine had access to it, and then perform the conversion.

Even after all that, there were problems with the conversion that
prevented it from working correctly. The VPC image was built using
Windows 2003 Server with service pack one. The converter utility assumes
that some drivers will be in a location that changed from the GA release
of Windows 2003 and the slipstreamed service pack one version. To get
the image properly converted I had to manually copy a bunch of drivers
from one of my working VMware images over to the partially converted VPC
image and let the Windows hardware wizard sort the rest of it out. I
ended up wasting the better part of two days to get all of this figured
out.

I am writing this here in case I ever have to perform this conversion
again, and I hope this guide will save anybody else with this problem a
lot of time and trouble.