You’d think that you could just add a USB stick to VMware Workstation 9 as a USB drive, then set the BIOS to boot from it, but no. To get VMware Workstation 9 to boot from a USB stick, the first thing you have to do is to edit the settings of the VM and remove the USB controller, obviously 😕 Next you have to add a new hard drive, specifying to use an existing hard drive, pointing to the USB stick. Next boot into the BIOS and set the VM to boot from the newly added hard drive.
That’s how to get VMware Workstation 9 to boot from a USB stick.