SQL Failure After Upgrade from VMWare 3.5 to VSphere 4 Fix

Came across this issue today and found this blog so useful I thought I would throw a ping back to it and help others

SQL Failure After Upgrade from VMWare 3.5 to VSphere 4 Fix
http://retr0rob.blogspot.com/2009/09/sql-failure-after-upgrade-from-vmware.html

In short the issue is that after an upgrade of VMWare, SQL may not start and the event log will report that a timeout occurred when trying to connect but the failure happens immediately. If you try and start SQL from the command line (e.g. in single user mode) then you will receive an application pop-up error "This application has failed to start because MSVCP71.dll was not found. Re-installing the application may fix this problem". To fix this issue download the missing MSVCP71.dll (get it here) and copy it to %windir%\system32, then reboot.

NOTE: No warrant is held that this is the solution in all cases but it certainly worked for me, and care should be taken when dealing with system files.