Okay, so actually Workstation freezes (which is different from a crash).
This sounds a little similar to a freeze that we discovered very late where Workstation might freeze if another application on your system is also frozen, although since it happens to you after you reboot, it might be a different problem.
The only other things I can think of are to try:
- Temporarily removing/renaming %APPDATA%\VMware\preferences.ini
- Modifying %APPDATA%\VMware\preferences.ini and setting:
pref.autoSoftwareUpdatePermission = "deny" pref.componentDownloadPermission = "deny"