Rm2K3 troubleshooting

[DvlshAngil]

Hi all,
  Hopefully someone can give me a hand.  I'm running VMware on a linux pc and my Rm2k3 won't do a test game.  It loads but the screen flashes and gives me a hard time.  If given enough patience it will load slooooooooowly.  I'm thinking that I don't have enough memory to run the test game feature (my boyfriend is the Linux guru in the house and he isn't available to answer this question).  Any help would be appreciated.

I also noticed that when I try to create a gamedisk it gives me a bunch of question marks instead of words?  Is there a patch for this that I have overlooked or should I only do it when my game is complete?

Thanks in advance for any help.