It might be a little bit extra "work" to use something like QEMU or Bochs, but you might consider it.
I've noticed when I went from a "Trial Version" of VPC to the "Standard Edition" (I got it for free, legally too), that although my Windows 3.1 VPC image worked fine, my "Damn Small Linux" and "ReactOS 0.2.5" images were broken somehow. Good came out of it, since I learned 0.2.7 of ReactOS was out, but still.
Just a warning to people, that stuff breaks way too easily in VPC. It might have a nice "point-and-click" interface, but if upgrading from VPC 2004 Trial Edition to VPC 2004 Standard Edition breaks some of your images, it's not worth it.