On the Jenkins master, the VMWare SDK (latest version) was installed, and the VMWare plugin. A new project was created. In the "Build Environment" section, "VMware Server VIX Virtual Machine Activation" was selected and the fields filled in. Shortly after the build was started, the Jenkins process crashed (the computer remained running). The Jenkins service had to be restarted manually.
The logs of the failed project show an error message:

Gestartet durch Benutzer anonymous
Baue auf Master in workspace C:\Programme\Jenkins\workspace\Integration-00 Setup Slave
[VMware] Connecting to VMware Server host 4vsvad02:902 as user (my user name on the host)
[VMware] VMware VIX error: The system returned an error. Communication with the virtual machine may have been interrupted
hudson.plugins.vmware.VMwareRuntimeException: The system returned an error. Communication with the virtual machine may have been interrupted
at hudson.plugins.vmware.VMware.checkError(VMware.java:63)
at hudson.plugins.vmware.VMware.waitForJobAndGetJobResultHandle(VMware.java:51)
at hudson.plugins.vmware.Host.<init>(Host.java:44)
at hudson.plugins.vmware.VMware.connect(VMware.java:42)
at hudson.plugins.vmware.VMwareActivationWrapper.setUp(VMwareActivationWrapper.java:276)
at hudson.tasks.BuildWrapper.setUp(BuildWrapper.java:140)
at hudson.model.Build$BuildExecution.doRun(Build.java:154)
at hudson.model.AbstractBuild$AbstractBuildExecution.run(AbstractBuild.java:499)
at hudson.model.Run.execute(Run.java:1502)
at hudson.model.FreeStyleBuild.run(FreeStyleBuild.java:46)
at hudson.model.ResourceController.execute(ResourceController.java:88)
at hudson.model.Executor.run(Executor.java:236)
Finished: FAILURE

The Windows event log shows that an error occured with the Jenkins service, but no useful information:

Unbehandelte Win32-Ausnahme in java.exe [356]. Fehler beim Just-In-Time-Debugging der Ausnahme: Der Debugger konnte nicht gestartet werden, da kein Benutzer angemeldet ist.

and:

Dienst "Jenkins" wurde unerwartet beendet. Dies ist bereits 1 Mal passiert.

This looks very similar to the discussion at http://jenkins.361315.n4.nabble.com/VMWare-plugin-crashing-hudson-td380323.html