I found a workaround.
I noticed that when I shutdown the host pc, the VMWare machine shuts down without freezing the host.
So I tried to send a "host is shutting down" message to the VM. Apparently it worked.
Download the http://download.microsoft.com/download/d/2/5/d2522ce4-a441-459d-8302-be8f3321823c/LogoToolsv1.0.msi logo tools and install.
Run the command: RMTool.exe -p [PID] -S -F
where [PID] is the pid of vmware-vmx.exe
it worked for me.