As Windows 7 gets closer to beta, I assume problems like these will become less and less. With that said, it has performed wonderfully for me so far.
Here is what I have done to get working guest networking under Windows 7 with VMWare Workstation 6.5:
#1. Avoid using bridging - it simply won't work.
#2. Avoid using NAT - that won't work either.
#3. Use 'Host-only', even though that doesn't make sense, it will in a moment.
#4. Enable Internet Connection Sharing on your internet enabled interface (whether it be a wired NIC, wireless NIC, or PPP connection), and select "VMNet1" as the network interface that needs the sharing.
#5. Change the IP address of VMNet from 192.168.0.1 to whatever it normally is for VMNet1 (typically something along the lines of 192.168.213.1).
#6. Set your guest networking to match the VMNet1 subnet (something like 192.168.213.2 if 192.168.213.1 is your VMNet1 host interface).
I can't figure out how to do it yet, but if there was a simple way to change VMNet1 to use 192.168.0.1 by default within VMWare overall, the manual changes would be unnecessary and I believe the ICS would continue to work after an hour or so.
If a VMWare expert out there can tell me how to do that, we might have a 100% working solution.
I've also had USB guest problems, which I've worked around in the meantime by using a USB-over-Network solution such as the product from
Fabulatech.
