Hi guys appreciate your assistance. Thought I'd report back here with the my results.
Unfortunately a clean boot did not do the trick. I had no choice but to create a new Windows user profile (and transfer all my settings/docs/etc) from my old profile to the new one. It's now working again as expected. It's a pity there is no official response from VMWare on this issue as there are quite a number of other posts describing the same problem.
Thanks to all of you for your responses!
Regards,
J