Thanks, I'll give that a try.

The "no generic solution" claim seems pretty dubious.I have not encountered any other Linux desktop applications that exhibit the problem, nor did the problem manifest with any guests under VMware Fusion (yes, I realize that is an entirely different platform).  So it seems clear that the vmware host application is the problem,   Doesn't vmware tools provide a way for the host to monitor the state of the guest and vice-versa? PowerOps, GuestInfo, GTK Toolbox,  etc?