VMWare server 2 (can't connect to webadmin page in Windows)

Well, I always feared this day would come. The, until now, infallible VMWare team has failed me. VMWare server 2 has abandoned the lightweight, useful and intuitive WMWare management console for what? you guessed it, a web interface... And if you are like me you hate it. Also if you are like me, it doesn't work. After installing the new version, what used to be the shortcut to the management console is now a literal shortcut to the address of the webadmin interface in your default browser (https://localhost/ui/#)the problem is when I click on it I get a "could not connect to server" error in both IE and Firefox (2 or 3).

The fix is a little odd, but here's what worked for me using XP sp3:
go to C:/windows/system32/drivers/etc/ and edit the "hosts" file in notepad or the simple text editor of your choice. It's going to have a bunch of commented out info (stuff with a # at the beginning of the line) followed by your local host address. which should read "127.0.0.1 localhost". All I did was add another entry for a machine that was already on my network, which looked like "ipofmachine machinename". for those needing a more literal example the hosts file should look something like this:

# this is a hosts file
# this is more info about the hosts file
# even more info about how its supposed to look
127.0.0.1 localhost
192.xxx.xxx.xxx othermachine

save that, restart and try out the VMWare server shortcut, that fixed it for me.
(this is reported to work in both Vista and XP but I've only tested it in XP)