VMWare: Problems upgrading Windows NT to Windows Server 2003

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I wanted to see the process of upgrading Windows NT 4.0 server to Windows Server 2003. I installed NT 4.0 and upgraded it to service pack 6a (only then was I able to load VMWare tools). Next, I popped in the Windows Server 2003 install disk. I did a compatibility check and got the message:

"The option to upgrade will not be available at this time because Setup was unable to load the file D:\i386\WINNTUPG\SETUPGRD.DLL....%1 is not a valid NT application".

I have no idea what this means.

It looked like I could just do a fresh install over the bones of NT so I tried that. Promptly got a blue screen. Restarted the machine and it blue screened again. I can just blow away the NT machine since it's virtual but I want to know what happened. In real life, it must be possible to upgrade NT to 2003 and I'd like to know what I did wrong. Thanks.