Thank you for your reply.
Seems my decision to buy WDS7 as OS for the purpose you correctly mention was mistaken.
Forgive my ignorance, but what is 'ELUA' ? Presume its the licence agreement?
I know I have managed via 'WindowsAIK' tools and its 'oscdimg' feature to eventually get an iso but it seems to be not recognised by the Vmware, despite being correct image type.
Probably your explanation is the reason?