Can't ping virtual machine from physical machine

Try to enable the check box for replicating port state and see if that helps. If not - are you running a host firewall on the Windows 2003 vm? From the Windows 2003 vm can you access other machines on your LAN than the host?

I checked off the box that said replicate physical connection state under the bridge option of the network adapter, but that did nothing.

The firewall on the virtual server and the physical machine are both turned off.

Yes, I can access other physical machines from the Windows 2003 VM (can both ping them and access shared resources)

I know you said the firewall on the host was off, but do you have any other type of Internet security product running on the host like Norton Internet Security, Symantec Endpoint Protection, etc.?

I know in particular I have had trouble with the Symantec product interfering. Communications is obviously there or you wouldn't be able to get out from the VM guest. Can you access any resources on the guest vm from other machines on the LAN? Perhaps it is just ping that is failing...

The only internet sceurity package is Trend Micro, amd I'm certain that is just an antivirus, no built in firewall or anything. I can't remote access the Virtual machine, join it's domain, or access it's shared resources. So it's not just pinging I can't do.

Have you installed the VMware tools package in the VM?

yep, VMware tools is installed on the Virtual machine.

so remote desktop is enabled on the vm right?
can you telnet to port 3389 from the physical machine to the vm?
what shows for the connection when you do a netstat while trying to telnet ?

You may want to try to change you vm NIC type. I would recommend vmxnet3. To do so you would go into settings, delete the current nic, add a new nic, and select type vmxnet3. After that you will need to reboot and reconfigure ip address, gateway, and dns.

I can't telent to the virtual machine.

I don't know how to change the NIC type to vmxnet 3. When I add a new NIC the options I get are bridged, NAT, host-only, custom. The options for custom are VMnet0-9, would VMnet3 be the option I an looking for?

So I set the NIC card option to VMnet3 but now the virtual machine isn't getting a valid ip address.

Set connection to bridged and assign IP address on same network as host machine. If host gets address from DHCP that will be OK for guest also.

The host can ping the Virtual machine fine. The problem is when I try to use another physical machine to ping the virtual machine. Even though the virtual machine can ping the 2nd physical machine, the 2nd physical machine can't ping the virtual machine.

Sounds like you are on NAT (vmnet8)

Move to bridged

The connection for the virtual machine is on bridged already.