This problem is hard to characterize, so bear with me... 
While a XP-sp2 VM in single window mode is running happily, but not in the foreground, the following events happen:
1. All connected USB peripherals stop working.
2. The VM fails, as if power off. Lock files remain behind, so simply restarting the VM doesn't work.
3. No application will launch after this. The system is responsive, and all apps that are running work, but no new ones will launch. If I quit running apps, they will not restart either. The system will not shutdown via the menu, and the only way to recover is a hard reset. I have no idea if this is a Fusion problem, an OSX problem, or something else altogether. It seems that the
This has happened twice now. Once last night, and once this morning. I just got the 15"MBP a week ago and installed fusion the next day. This particular problem started yesterday, so it was running properly for a few days without the problem. I have changed a few things, but it isn't clear to me which, if any, would have such a system-wide problem. In the last day, I have changed:
a) networking from bridged to NAT because I can only get one VPN connection at a time.
b) configured MS Entourage (was already installed, but not configured, so I hadn't been using it).
I'm stumped. I welcome any thoughts or similar experiences you might have.