For screen resolution issues, in the virtual machine .vmx file add the following (or similar):

svga.maxWidth = "1600"
svga.maxHeight = "1200"

For VMware firewall settings:

/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp –dport 8222 -j ACCEPT

Also, for Windows 7 installs on Linux, might need to format the virtual hard disk first.