hsafer wrote: Great, thanks David. Running the upgrade within the exisitng VM will really work?
Hershel
By normal defaults no it will not work and in all likelihood it will fail unless you take proper steps to avoid the expected failure due the default incompatibilities between Windows XP and Windows 8 Virtual Machines and to that end have a look at the following VMware KB Articles. While the second one is for Windows XP to Windows 7 nonetheless it should still help with Windows 8.
Have a look at:
Upgrading a VMware Fusion virtual machine from Windows XP to Windows 7 (1015396)