From HowToGeek

This page will attempt to detail various problems and solutions when running Linux in a VMWare guest window.

Contents 1 Installing VMware Tools 2 Fixing When VMWare Tools Won't Compile on Ubuntu 3 Fixing "The vmxnet network driver is in use, please stop the network" Error 4 Fixing "The following VMware kernal modules have been found on your system that were not installed by the VMware installer." 5 Fixing the Crazyness that sometimes occurs when VMware is going (Loss of certain keys such as Ctrl, Shift)

Installing VMware Tools

You'll have to first go to VM \ Install VMware Tools on the menu to make vmware mount the cd.

sudo /bin/bash

cp /cdrom/*.gz /tmp/
cd /tmp
tar xvzf VM*.gz
cd vmware*
./vmware-install.pl

You'll have to follow through the prompts, pretty much answer yes to everything. At the end, you'll be asked to run these commands:

sudo /etc/init.d/networking stop
sudo rmmod pcnet32
sudo rmmod vmxnet
sudo depmod -a
sudo modprobe vmxnet
sudo /etc/init.d/networking start

Fixing When VMWare Tools Won't Compile on Ubuntu

You'll have to install all of the build tools in order to compile the tools.

sudo apt-get install build-essentials 
sudo apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r`

Now you should be able to run the installation script again.

Fixing "The vmxnet network driver is in use, please stop the network" Error

You are getting this error because you have a prior version of the tools installed. You'll have to stop networking and remove the network driver.

sudo /etc/init.d/networking stop
sudo rmmod vmxnet

Now switch back to the installation directory and run the install command again:

sudo ./vmware-tools.pl

Fixing "The following VMware kernal modules have been found on your system that were not installed by the VMware installer."

If you are getting the following error when trying to install the tools:

"The following VMware kernal modules have been found on your system that were 
not installed by the VMware installer. Please remove them then run the installer again.

- vmblock
- vmmon
- vmnet

Execution aborted."

You are getting this error probably because you upgraded the kernel without removing VMware tools first, so now the modules are there and won't uninstall for some reason.

Run these commands to manually remove vmware tools (mostly):

sudo rm -rf /etc/vmware*
sudo rm -rf /usr/lib/vmware-tools
sudo rm -rf /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/misc/vm*

Now you should be able to run the installation again.

Fixing the Crazyness that sometimes occurs when VMware is going (Loss of certain keys such as Ctrl, Shift)

If you are losing functionality of certain keys, both in your VM and on your local machine, open a terminal and try the following:- setxkbmap

It sets the keyboard using the X Keyboard Extension. I was loosing Control, Shift, Esc, Alt, some letters. Looking it up, its a bug they haven't gotten around to tweaking yet. If that doesn't work, just make sure you haven't used the same key twice in a shortcut somewhere.