as promised, a situation update.
Still not working for me, I'm afraid.
I started with a fresh install in VM from the TinyCore iso.
I then loaded open-vm-tools-desktop, and nano, updated the onboot.lst, listed the version (correct) and ran dmesg which shows DX : No.
I then saved the changes and rebooted.
The system seems to boot OK, and a GUI flashes up on the screen before all goes black.
On the basis that a picture is worth 1000 words, I have made a video of the process which is available here :
http://www.pughx2.com/assets/px2/files/tcl-open-vm.mp4
I also tried with CorePurex64, but I get "out of memory" at the end of the installation on open-vm-tools-desktop. I can make and post a video if you wish.
Sorry to be such a pain...
NWJ