It's interesting, it's showing that you are using a single processor HAL already. I'm not entirely sure why this isn't handling the locks correctly but lets replace it with the Uniprocessor HAL anyways.
Okay, navigate to c:\winnt\system32 and rename ntoskrnl.exe to ntoskrnl.exe.old just to be safe.
Then copy halapic.dll and ntoskrnl.exe to c:\winnt\system32.
Change the boot.ini from:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="Windows NT Server Version 4.00" /HAL=hal.dll /KERNEL=ntoskrnl.exe /NUMPROC=1
to
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="Windows NT Server Version 4.00" /HAL=halapic.dll /KERNEL=ntoskrnl.exe /NUMPROC=1
Try booting this and see if that makes it any better. Remember to change the vCPUs back to 1 and the OS back to Win NT 4 in vCenter.