I had to do this to enter Safe Boot:
1. Click the play arrow to start.
2. Click again when the hand icon shows.
2. This is the tricky part. Press the Shift key ONLY when the vmware gray screen shows (before the Apple gray logo showed); NOT before, NOT after.
Then and only then the progress bar showed and then the Mac OS X Server "Safe Boot" (in red) with Name and Password to enter.
3. The problem now is that all characters typed show as Capital letters, with the Caps Lock or Shift keys pressed or not. Absolutelly all. Which rendered the username and password not valid.
What can I do to type lowercase characters? Thanks.