I do experience exactly the same problems: Host Win7, 64bit; Guests: Various
When Windows installed the November Patches on Tuesday two weeks ago, VMware stopped handling the DNS requests via VMNet8 correctly.
While I could handle DNS requests in a private network easily by statically configuring the DNS server, this approach does not work when travelling with changing settings.
I presume that DNS-handling code in VMNet8 is not compatible with the latest patches by Microsoft.
A workaround for me -- working but not convenient -- is the use of a VPN-tunnel to my corporate network with statically configuring the DNS server of the company