i have had the same issue quite often - also if VMs weren`t accessed for some longer time.

what is the type of network card inside the host ?

you could workaround that by installing some scheduled job inside the VM which is pinging another machine from time to time.

please post exact model and also post operating system + driver information.
please also post the type of network switch where the system is hooked to.

there are guesses,that this problem is not related to vmware alone.

so - the only way to get deeper into this and systematically trying to catch this error is to collect statistical information to see, if the problem is specific to certain setup constellations.

what about starting to compile such list within this thread ?

Maybe try this ?

1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit , and then click OK.
2. Locate and then click the following registry subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters
3. On the Edit menu, point to New, click DWORD Value, and then type EnableRSS
4. Double-click EnableRSS, type 0 , and then click OK.
5. Exit Registry Editor.

If you are still experiencing problems (like slow file copying), you should also disable Offloading support:
1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
2. Locate and then click the following registry subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters
3. In the right pane, make sure that the DisableTaskOffload registry entry exists. If this entry does not exist, follow these steps to add the entry:
a. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD Value, and then type DisableTaskOffload .
4. Double-Click DisableTaskOffload, type 1, and then click OK.
5. Exit Registry Editor.

I'm having the same problem and it appears to have happened in the same timeframe that other people are having similar problems, about 7-10 days ago.

I first thought it was my host OS (Win XP) that had problems and so I did a reinstall (my PC needed it anyway), but this didn't help. I've tried an XP guest and a Knoppix guest and they both exhibit the same behaviour.

The problem is that they are able to get an IP address from the DHCP server, but nothing after that works. From the guest I can ping the IP of the host and from the host I can ping the guest. From the guest I can't get to anything else on the network. My host PC works fine (network wise).

I've read all of the threads and tried changing the EnableRSS & DisableTaskOffload registry keys with no success (yes, I rebooted).

Something that is interesting is that up until I reloaded my PC I was using VMware Server v1.0.0 (don't know the build number), so it's not just the current version of VMWare that has the problem. This makes me believe that it could well be a Windows update that has caused this problem as nothing else changed on my PC when the problem occurred (prior to the reload).

The reason I'm blaming Windows is that I didn't change anything on my PC and it just sopped working. I was using an old version of VMware, so it wasn't a VMware update that caused it (ie. I hadn't updated VMware). I'm happy to be proven wrong though.

I'm not really worried about what t he problem is, or blaming MS, VMware, Linux or someone else, I just want to find a resolution for it !

Good idea, I hadn't thought to use NAT. This allows me to continue to use my VM as it mostly used for outbound network traffic which NAT is fine for. If I was using it to host a server (inbound connections) I wouldn't be nearly as happy to use NAT.