File corruption when running VMware.

[Hong-Gunn Chew]

I have a repeatable problem when running VMware workstation 3.00 and
3.01.  The cause is still unknown, and could be VMware itself, the
hardware or the kernel.

When running VMware, a file read from disk can be corrupted and will
stay corrupted in memory in the disk cache.  It can be reproduced by
checking the md5sum of a large file (>200MB), with different results
each time when VMware is running.
Further tests shows the corruption occurs only at the 3rd byte of a
16-byte block, and only the LSB is affected.
Load on the machine is minimal and VMware is at the BIOS setup screen.

Has anyone encountered this problem before?  I can provide any
additional information that might be useful.

Cheers,
Hong-Gunn

System configuration:
CPU:		P4 2.0A 2.0GHz
RAM:		4x256MB RDRAM PC800
MB:		ASUS P4-TE firmware:1005
		Intel i850
Disk:		IBM Deskstar 120GXP 80GB
Graphics:	ATI 7500 OEM

Distri:	RedHat 7.2
Kernel:	2.4.18
X:		Xfree 4.2
glibc:	2.2.4-19.3