[lvdata]

Hey, don't give up so quick, I have successfully unlocked and flashed my TP under XP Pro Host, running VMware 6.0, with a XP Guest with the guest doing the flashing. On mine to unlock I had to run the unlocker, wait for the tri colored screen, then the unlocker would time out while the phone was updating.

The process was:
1. Start unlocker, and get part way though.
2. Rebooted into tri-color mode
3. Re-auto plug and play detected on host
4. time out and fail
5. Unattached from host, and connected to guest VM
6. Re-run the unlocker and kinda ignore the prompts to get back to the same point that it timed out, and then successfully updated my TP.

Flashing was similar process. What mode is your USB connection using in the VM? USB 1.1 or 2.0? Mine is set to use 2.0 Also during the re-plug and play reattachment I seem to remember it showing up as DIFFRENT devices depending on mode the phone is in, so VM may NOT be auto-magiclly reattacheing it up to the VM.

Also you might try the local libary or university's public computers to use to do the initial unlock, then afterward you can use the memory card method of flashing the OS to try all the diffrent firmwares.