There is an issue with VMware Workstation's network adapters in that they are placed in the 'unidentified network' location which by default is a 'public location'. If any network location in Vista is public then the public location firewall rules apply (currently for me that means non discoverable etc).
The unidentified network location can be manually changed to private but this setting does not persist between host reboots (I believe this is by-design).
I would think that the Vmware adapters should be placed in a different location to prevent this problem but I'm not sure why Vista is identifying (or should I say failing to identify) the adapters. I'm attempted to set the IP addresses manually for both adapters as well as adding a gateway (the same IP) as I've heard this might help in getting identification to work but the settings get forced by (presumably by VMware) each time (strangely enough the forced IPv4 properties for both adapters is blank).
Can someone shed some light on this issue - I'm surprised there aren't any other posts there about this as it's a bit frustratiing (being forced to run in public location mode).