I've recently installed VMWare Player 5.0.2, to run a Windows 7 x64 Pro virtual machine. I did this because I've upgraded to Windows 8.1, and my citrix receiver no longer works, meaning I can't connect to work remotely any more. I used to use "Virtual XP Mode" for connecting to work when I had Win 7 on my PC, as I kind of like having all my work stuff in a separate virtual machine anyway.
Originally after installing Win 8.1, and realising I was never going to get Citrix working, I turned to client Hyper-V to run a win 7 VM. That worked ok, but I quickly got annoyed with the inability to dynamically resize my VM's screen res, or run in proper full screen. While googling these issues I realised VMWare Player would be a much better solution. So i uninstalled Hyper-V via add/remove programs, and installed Player.
It's all set up and working, but ever since installing this a week or so ago, my network connectivity just completely drops, for around 30-60 seconds occassionally. I'll simply go to open a new web page, and notice a delay, before eventually the web page times out. If I take a deep breath and count to ten, then refresh, the page loads. It seems to be happening on both my VM's virtual network adapter, as well as my physical machine's, at the same time. It's currently happening at least a couple of times an hour. The network connection icon in my taskbar doesn't change, and I've grabbed another device (such as my tablet) to test network connectivity while my PC is out, and it's been fine, so I'm ruling out my router and/or ISP.
I have a 100mbps cable connection, with average speedtest dload speeds in the 90's. It's a 6-core AMD cpu, with 8gb ram. The network card is an on-board gigabit card, hard wired to a gigabit port on my router.
Can anyone suggest what I should do to trace what's going on with these regular network dropouts? I've attached a screenshot of my network setup: