VMWare Tools. The whole virtualization process has been rough thus far. I'm certain that it is just a get it together and it'll be fine and stable kind of thing.
I'm creating an XP guest machine as I type.

I'm also starting to question whether or not it's just worth using debian. (I'll admit, it's one distro I don't think I've installed yet.)

Also, you have your guest machine up and running before you try to install VMWare tools, right? It's a must.