first time trying vm workstation / macos - all white screen during setup

Hi all, trying this for the first time. I have an iso for 26.3 tahoe and vmware workstation 17.6.4. I can get into the setup for tahoe up to the point where i select light or dark mode, and then the screen turns white and sits there forever.

no idea what im doing wrong?

I saw a guide that ran the auto-unlocker, create a vm with 1 processor / 2 cores, set the ram, hd and enable video 3d accelration and set to 8 gig of ram. also the mouse is HORRIBLY laggy during setup too.

i did try the unlocker with workstation 26 but that didnt seem to work at all.

is this a common thing with an easy fix?