I really am quite a novice with Poser but I'll try!

When I've wanted to simulate hair, I too have only followed the tutorial. In Poser I fit the hair to the character. The hair should move with the character's head before going in to VWD's program. Is that happening?

Then, once the figure and hair have been selected in VWD go to the scene viewer. You need to paint some vertices on the figure's head and then -on the 'Hair Parameters' tab press 'Compute Head Vertices'. (Paint with mouse click and drag; remove vertices with Alt mouse click and drag).

Then press 'Show Hair Vertices' and then Generate Springs and Finish'.

Now you can go to the 'Simulation Parameters' tab and run the simulation.

I haven't compared the above with the tutorial steps in the manual but have just run such a simulation. On my system I sometimes run out of memory with some of my hair assets, otherwise the above works OK.

Edited for clarity