VMware crash on startup

Hi all

This is kind of urgent... please give any advice if possible. I'll try and explain it as simply as possible.

As a new user of VMware, I was impressed with it. Until it decided to freeze every time I start it. I have an assessment due tomorrow, and I need to submit the files via terminal... the only copy of these files are in the virtual machine :wall:

Basically it tries to resume my last session, which is on the login screen. If I try to either restart the machine or login, the screen becomes unresponsive, and I have to open tskmgr to end the process.

Is there any way at all that I can salvage my files, or restart the machine? Providing a screenshot would be useless I think...

Your help is much appreciated.
ac

EDIT: the screen freezes once I even try to click *anywhere*

Simplest way: create a new VM, attach the VMDK, boot from a live-CD, mount the drive, copy your files over to a USB drive. That should take care of the immediate problem.

As for the rest: which version of Ubuntu are you running, did you install the VMware Tools, between work did you shut down the machine or just pause/save it, did you hibernate the machine from within the guest?