vmtoolsd preventing guest (XP) shutdown

[geeehbee]

I've been running a Win XP 32bit guest on a Win7 64bit host for a long time with no problems. Recently upgraded VMWare Workstation to 9.0.1 build-894247 and upgraded the guest's hardware compatibility to a Workstation 9.0 VM (from 8.0). But now every time I try to shutdown the guest, I get a pop up claiming vmtoolsd won't quit. So I have to kill the process to allow XP to shutdown. I have tried repairing vmtools and also uninstalling/reinstalling vmtools, but the problem still persists.

I will appreciate any pointers in resolving the issue. Thanks.

[geeehbee]

Adding a screenshot of the error that popus up when trying to shut down the guest (XP):

First, get the following on shutting down:

And then, I have to "End Now" to do the graceful shut down: