As long as the keyboard connected to your Mac has a left "control' key on it, that's all you need for the behavior to be the same. It works just fine on my MBP laptop with Fusion 3. The alt key is actually the left "option" key on the Mac keyboard (use the fn key on the laptop keyboard with it and the backspace to pass the controlaltdelete command to the VM). Desktop keyboards often have the insert and a true delete key, so you can drop the fn from that mix there.

Which version of Fusion are you running? What Windows OS is the guest/VM?

Thanks for getting back to me. I also have a MBP running Fusion 3, and the guest OS is W7. I want to only use the MBP keyboard, and it has a Control key on the left side, but when I do Ctrl-click in a Windows app, it shows the right-click menu, which as you know is a Mac OS-type result. When I do a shift-click to select a range of items, it only selects the arrow is on when I do the shift-click.

Try the right control key, or add the fn key to the combination. I'll fire my MBP up when I get the chance to see if there's any other way to get that to happen.

There is no right Control key on my MBP keyboard -- just on the left. When I try fn-control-click, I also get the right-click menu. When I try either control-alt-click or control-command-click, it just selects the item my mouse was on at the moment.

Use shiftcommand click combinations to get the same effect on the VM as Ctrlclick on a physical Windows system.

Thanks, Golddiggle, but when I try shift-command-click, on an item, it selects only that item rather than selecting it in addition to another I've already selected. It's as though I had simply clicked that item.

I thought it worked when I did it on my MBP in a WinXP VM... I was doing it on the desktop, so I think the feedback was misleading. I've not seen a default key mapping that replicates the behavior of a standard Windows system. You might try a custom keyboard/mouse mapping (under Preferences) but there's no garantee it will work properly.

Disable VMware Fusion > Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse > Mouse Shortcuts.

Thanks. I must be misunderstanding what you're describing, though. When I go to VMware Fusion > Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse > Mouse

Shortcuts, I only see two boxes there that can be checked on or off: Secondary Button and Button 3. Checking off both of those did not appear to make any difference.

In the preferences window, click on the Keybaord and Mouse item and uncheck the "enable Key Mappings" box. Then use the Control+Option buttons combined with the click to get the effect you're looking for.

I found this exchange from 13 years ago via Google, and thought I'd post an update since golddiggie's solution is almost right in the current VMware software.  

1. In "Settings...", click on "Keyboard & Mouse".
2. Click on the "Mouse Shortcuts" tab
3. Uncheck "Secondary Button" and "Button 3"

You will now be able to still right-click with an external mouse, or with a two-finger tap on the trackpad, but no longer with a control-click. Control-click will now be passed to Windows and function as one would expect in Windows.