Thanks - deleting the virtual machine from the directory seems to have done the trick in terms of getting rid of the item on my list of virtual machines, but I'm not sure it's given me back the disk space I originally allocated to it. I thought VMWare partitioned out sections of the disk when you create a new vertual machine?
Also, I don't understand why I found it so hard to find out how to remove a virtual machine. As I mentioned the 'delete' option was grayed out and for the life of me I couldn't find anything on the web on the subject - to me this would be a basic funtional requirement of any virtual machine software.
I generaly think VMWare is great but their customer support is really bad - I found it almost imposible, to the point I gave up, to put a request for support in on this matter.
yes it is strange there isnt a delete button near the new/download/settings/run area.
im not surprised that delete in the edit menu was greyed out, that "delete" seems more reserved for text based actions, and is often greyed out in many applications (for me, right now in firefox as an example!)
as edesignuk pointed out, you should have recovered the space from your windows installation when you deleted the virtual machine.
i believe that you can also set parallels and VMWare to use a pre-existing boot-camp partition, but I have not tried that option. this may be where the confusion regarding partitions etc is coming from (as certainly that is one way to run VMWare.)
