If you use VMware Workstation, you know that the guest can take forever to shutdown. The solution at http://flakrat.blogspot.com/2011/12/vm-guests-take-forever-to-shutdown-in.html works perfectly. The solution is to edit your VMX file and ADD the following lines:

prefvmx.minVmMemPct = "100"
mainMem.useNamedFile = "FALSE"
mainMem.partialLazySave = "FALSE"
mainMem.partialLazyRestore = "FALSE"

You may be asking, what do these settings do? Here ya go:

• prefvmx.minVmMemPct = “100″ – try to fit memory into RAM
• mainMem.useNamedFile = “FALSE” – doesn’t use named-file, which is only used for VMs on slow disks
• mainMem.partialLazySave = “FALSE”  – do not take snapshots in background
• mainMem.partialLazyRestore = “FALSE”  – do not restore snapshots in background

Kudos to FlakRat!