I have VMware player 5.0.0 running on Windows 7 x64, the guest VM is 32-bit Windows XP. The guest network is bridged.
After an hour of use, the network within the VM stops working. By that I mean that Windows XP starts trying to do what looks like a DHCP, then eventually gives up and says that the network connection has limited connectivity (which is an understatement). doing a DHCP release/renew doesn't work, disabling the NIC via Windows XP just seems to cause the ncpa.cpl dialogue to hang. The NIC is a VMware accelerated AMD PCnet (not my choice, but I can't see how to change the type in VMware Player...).
My DHCP lease time is 1 hour, but I don't understand why a renew would fail when it has clearly got an address quite happily when booted up.
For now I've changed the lease time to 8 hours which I hope will make the problem go away... assuming it is somehow DHCP related.
Don't suppose anyone has any ideas?