tomcat 6.0.14 service fail with jre 1.6 update 2 on windows server 2003 on vmware (see also bug 41538) work around - i installed the tomcat 6.0.14 with jre 1.5 update 7 on windows server 2003 on vmware and the service started with no problems.
found out the machine doesn't have the msvcr71.dll at all. If the msvcr71.dll is in the system32 folder the installations of tomcat 6.0.14 and jre 1.6u2 work fine and the service starts as needed.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 41538 ***