Delay boot time on a VMware virtual machine
Somewhere in a dark corner at VMware HQ somebody had the great idea of setting the BIOS to display for less than two seconds on a virtual machine, which makes it almost impossible to hit the F2 key needed to access the BIOS menu. Fortunately, there is a simple solution.
Solution
Open the virtual machine .vmx configuration file you wish to modify and somewhere in the configuration add the following parameter.
bios.bootDelay = “5000”
Here is an example of how it looks. 
What this parameter is extend the BIOS display time for five seconds, which is enough time for you to press the F2 key. 
References
http://communities.vmware.com/thread/106757