After installing VMware you cannot access the Webinterface? You experience the following result:

• When browsing to the webinterface using http://ipaddressesx, you receive a “Page cannot be displayed” error.
• When browsing to the webinterface using https://ipaddressesx, you receive a SSL security warning and then  a “Page cannot be displayed” error.

The server didn’t update his hosts file correctly, solve it using the following steps:
1) Log on to the server console (using the server’s keyboard or SSH)
2) Open the hosts file using a texteditor: nano /etc/hosts
3) Make sure there’s a localhost entry and an hostname entry, a little example:

# Do not remove the following line, or various programs
# that require network functionality will fail.
127.0.0.1       localhost
192.168.1.1     ESX_TESTLAB

4) Exit the editor using CTRL-X, save your changes with Y.
5) Visit the VMware ESX webaccess using your favorite internet browser on your client.

Today i had to install Windows 2003 R2 + SP2 (downloaded from MSDN) within a virtual machine because i needed a DC for a physical testcluster (if your not into IT, this sentence must be a pain in the ass).

I noticed that the installer just kept on going forever at the “installing devices” part.

Did you know that you can press SHIFT-F11 during setup to see that windows is doing? In this case the ‘add new hardware’ wizard was running.
You can also use SHIFT-F10 to get a command prompt

After some research i found the solution:
1) Reset the virtual machine (don’t boot from cdrom)
2) Keep the focus within the virtual machine (don’t ctrl-alt)

You’ll see it works this time, probably has something to do with the detection of keyboard and/or mouse.