You should be able to find RC1 pretty easily. That version is working well for me.

Although I am running VS.net with VB6, I would recommend putting VS.NET on its own partition (just to be safe).

If you've got Win2k that will work fine. XP is even better, but you don't need to buy it if you don't already own it.

Also, you will most likely need a DVD rom for the installation, and maybe access to the internet from the new partition. Otherwise, everything went pretty smoothly with the installation.