Have you tried disabling acpi? I have found that both vmware-workstation and vmware-server have issues with the linux acpi drivers. In Ubuntu:

#sudo nano /boot/grub/menu.lst

Look for the first entry similar too:

title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.17-11-generic

root (hd0,0)

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.17-11-generic root=/dev/sda1 ro quiet splash

initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.17-11-generic

quiet

savedefault

boot

and add acpi=off to the kernel line:

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.17-11-generic root=/dev/sda1 ro quiet splash acpi=off