I've had the exact same experience- and for me, it's a complete show stopper. It happens with VMware Workstation, VMware Player, and VMware Server. When one of these products is installed, I cannot put my machine into standby, hibernation, software reboot or even shutdown. Which means that I need to keep my laptop running, or force it off by holding down the power button. This happens even when VMware is not running, and there are no VMs running. It happens when VMware is the ONLY virtualization provider on the machine- I tried this on a clean build to make sure that it wasn't a conflict with VirtualBox or Virtual PC.

One suggestion, the only thing I tried that helped, was to disable all VMware network interfaces by right clicking on them and choosing "Disable." With the VMware virtual network interfaces disabled, I can usuall reboot or shutdown; hibernation and suspend still don't work. When I want to use a VMware VM I have to reenable them and remember to disable them after I'm done.

I'm running Windows XP SP4- upgrading your service pack won't help anything.

The only solution I came up with was to try Sun's VirtualBox or Microsoft's Virtual PC. I'd suggest checking them both out. VirtualBox is the closest to VMware as far as features, speed and compatibility; Virtual PC feels and performs a bit like a version of VMware from 4-5 years ago- nothing like we have today with VMware and VirtualBox, but it's nice to have an option when VirtualBox doesn't hack it and VMware is busy killing your machine. :P Because I'm not the only one who has had these problems at work, we're looking into migrating over to VirtualBox. At this point, we're not sure what option we have for our workstations.

Sort of like a Microsoft product: "It's great software, except that it doesn't work." :P

VirtualBox: http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads
Virtual PC: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=04D26402-3199-48A3-AFA2-2DC0B40A73B6&displaylang=en

Best of luck to you!