I had a very similar problem, albeit with trying to virtualize a physical NT4 server that, mercifully, was working. There's an ancient VMWare Conversion tool that works with NT4 physical machines as a source. (I needed VMware-converter-3.0.3-89816.exe, found here, but who knows how long that will stay up.) I installed the client on the source (the manager required IE5 or some such nonense), and the full install on a separate Win 7 Pro machine (had to set up a shared folder and have the Win 7 computer allow NTLMv1 - there may be more hoops I'm forgetting. In Win10 SMB1 is disabled by default, so that's another level of stuff to work out if a Win10 host is your destination.).
- https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1005208
First I did all this stuff that I could (in terms of prepping the source machine to be virtualized, the "All Windows Versions (vmscsi only)" stuff, then as much of the "Windows XP / 2000 / NT (buslogic and vmscsi)" as I could. (I had to download a vmscsi.sys as it didn't come up in my fresh, separate Win NT VM, even with VMWare Tools. I only had the buslogic registry key to copy, but that turned out to be necessary and enough.)
Restarted and retried replication. It still got to like 97% and failed, though. This was my third try, so I decided to switch to trying to make the almost-replicated VM work myself.
- https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2002106
I saw this linked in "Related Information" on the bottom of the first kb and clicked on it. Apparently there is configuration that can be done on a new VM out of that conversion tool. I highlighted my latest attempted replication and clicked on the "Configure Machine" button. Went through the wizard, picking "Other" as a source, then indicating my new VM.
Then back to Workstation Player and whaddayaknow it finally booted!