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
