I am back to report that I figured out the problem.
Three changes occurred to my PC at the same time, and I have no way of knowing which one caused the issue. I updated my BIOS, my BroadBand card configuration was resolved by installing a new card, and I restarted the WLAN service to enable my wireless card to work.
I disabled all new network adapters and nothing worked.
My firewall configuration was unchanged and the VM was able to receive IP packets and invoke a response prior to this outage.
My VM configuration was unchanged. It just stopped working. Could not figure out why.
I extracted the vmnetcfg.exe program from my VM player install package. I normally clean this up but still had it and extracted it with the /e .\extract parameters documented.
I then ran this:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Player\vmnetcfg.exe"
I clicked on "Connect a host virtual adapter to this network" and VMware Network Adapter VMnet0 was added.
This created a network adapter on "VMware Virtual Ethernet Adapter for VMnet8" on my Windows 7 system. This adapter did not appear on my system until I ran the vmnetcfg.exe program. It may have been deleted or corrupted somehow and ultimately that's what created my problem.
The easiest way I'd trouble shoot this again is to look at Control Panel\Network and Internet\Network Connections. Is there a VMware Virtual Ethernet Adapter? If it's missing you can't connect from the Host O/S although you can browse from the Guest to the Internet all day long. You create it by using the vmnetcfg.exe program that could not be more obscurely located. I am grateful that it is still included since this would be tough to configure without it.
Hope this helps.
