With the VM powered of, remove the virtual CD-ROM drive, Floppy drive, Sound adapter and USB controller from the virtual machine configuration.

Run the VM is this configuration for a while to see if the reported issue goes away.

I assume you used some other VMware product to create this VM, you may have to use it to edit the virtual machine configuration or hand edit the .vmx file after making a backup copy of it.

By the way, how much physical RAM does your host have?