You don't need VMware Tools for this to work.
Not sure what the problem is, but try only NAT, in order to avoid confusion and for Host access this is the simple way. Check your address space with "ipconfig /all" - it has to be the same as NAT networking address space. Please make a note that while ping might work, tcp/ip doesn't really work for all services if you don't boot the Windows computer (talking about client now). If your addresses are somehow wrong, change them manually. Please observe that also Gateway must be correct if you require Internet access. It kind of sounds that you don't automatically get correct addresses to your client or shuffling between NAT and Bridged may have caused confusion or proper reboots have not been done between trials. ... or the testing has been wrong: Your host access might have been OK, but Internet doesn't work because Gateway address is wrong.
If it doesn't work, check that Host computer doesn't block anything - disable all Firewalls or something and reboot to verify that they are shut. When you get it to work, open Firewalls and configure properly.
For filesharing, you don't necessarily need any of this. Just drag and drop between host and client - it works well with GB-class files - the write speed of the disk(s) is the main limiting factor. If you need an UNC-share for some application, of course then you need to get the networking to work. Basically, this is a networking problem, not really anything VMware specific - if that helps to analyze the situation.
... of course you need to verify first that your client Ethernet card is working ... if it isn't you obviously cannot configure anything manually.
