TODO:
Have you ever received "Could not access network location..." when you attempt to install an application on Windows runnin in VMWare?
There are 2 sections of registry keys that need to be inspected.
SOLUTION:
Navigate to these 2 keys, and look for entries that hve invalid settings. In my case the HKCU had an entry called "Personal", that had a path to \\vmware-host\shared folders\documents. Once I changed that to "c:\Documents and Settings\myusername" the issue went away.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders
NOTES:
The new path will require you to change "myusername" to your proper user name.