Periodically, the internet simply stops working in my virtual machine, and the only way I can get it working again is to restart the host computer. Since I use the virtual machine specifically for testing web pages, this is, shall we say, a bother.

Details: I have Windows XP Pro running in VMware Player (v. 3.0.0 build-203739) on a Windows 7 host. It's set to NAT (shared IP address) because the firewall won't allow a bridged connection.

Every couple of days or so, first the internet slows down to a crawl, then eventually it stops working altogether. Both VMWare and the virtual OS report that they are connected, everything looks just peachy, I can reach the internet from the host, but on the VM, all web pages time out and/or report that the server could not be found. (Browser-independent; tried with IE, FF, Chrome, Safari, and Opera.)

When this happens, the only way I've found to restore the internet connectivity is to restart the host machine. Restarting the VM doesn't help, nor does refreshing network connections on either the host or the guest. (Although I'm not entirely sure I've found the proper way to refresh a network connection in Windows 7...)

I have not noticed any predictability about when the problem occurs, i.e. it's not immediately after I do anything special. It seems to occur mostly after putting the host to sleep once or twice, but it has happened even if the host has been in continuous use. It also seems independent of when I start using the VM - sometimes, I wake up the VM and the internet is really slow in it, then eventually stops working altogether; other times, I wake up the VM, use it perfectly happily for a while, then suddenly the internet is gone.

Does anyone know why this is occurring? Failing that, is there a workaround that's less drastic than restarting the host? (Windows 7 startup times are blazingly fast compared to previous versions of Windows, but it's still a hassle to close all my programs and reopen them again.)

Edit: while badges overall are nice, the Tumbleweed badge isn't helping me to solve my problem. Hasn't anyone encountered anything even remotely similar?