when vmwplayer is running and you are trying to switch to another user, so that another instance of the X-Server has to be started, the whole X-Server gets unuseable and you have to restart it. that means all unsafed data in your GUI-session is gone.
the only thing, that is not standard here, is that i am using two displays in xinerama mode
ben@chaos ~/tmp $ uname -a
Linux chaos 2.6.15-27-686 #1 SMP PREEMPT Sat Sep 16 02:13:27 UTC 2006 i686 GNU/Linux
ben@chaos ~/tmp $ dpkg -l |grep vmware
ii vmware-player 1.0.2-2 Free virtual machine player from VMware
ii vmware-player-kernel-modules 2.6.17.10 vmware-player kernel module dependency packa
ii vmware-player-kernel-modules-2.6.15-25 2.6.15.10-7 vmware-player modules for Linux (kernel 2.6.
ii vmware-player-kernel-modules-2.6.15-26 2.6.15.10-9 vmware-player modules for Linux (kernel 2.6.
ii vmware-player-kernel-modules-2.6.15-27 2.6.15.10-10 vmware-player modules for Linux (kernel 2.6.
ii vmware-player-kernel-modules-2.6.17-10 2.6.17.6-1 vmware-player modules for Linux (kernel 2.6.
ii xserver-xorg-driver-vmware 10.11.1.3-0ubuntu1 X.Org X server -- VMware display driver
the good news:
if you stop vmplayer everything is worrking as expected again. ;)
Is this symptom still reproducible in 8.10 alpha?