This is just a suggestion, but if you're still taking those sorts of courses and are in need of a guinea pig PC (and have a little bit of cash), you should rent a virtual private server. They're a lot cheaper than you think and function as an entirely independent operating system, and can run with Windows as well as different Linux distros (the latter is cheaper, and better IMO). My server is a VPS and I pay an incredibly low rate (< $15 a month), and I haven't had any problems with my host (AlienLayer) in the six months I've been with them. If you look around on Web Hosting Talk you may be able to find an even better deal. You can connect to it remotely and send commands to it via SSH in PuTTY and do file operations with WinSCP. :)
Again, it was just a thought I had when I read about your struggles of dealing with MySQL on VMWare. :)