I should have mentioned my antivirus program took care of the viruses so they're gone now.
The VMware program on my computer came as part of a Mercedes Benz Shop Manual Program (WIS) and it was installed as part of the shop manual program. Unlike the normal VMware Virtual Machine setup I didn't need to install Windows XP. It, or a portion of it, was installed during the installation of the shop manual program so that's probably where the problem lies.
With the help that's been given in this forum I'm now wondering if there's such a thing as creating an XP virtual machine without installing the entire XP O.S.. Is that possible?