How to Change the Screen Size in VMware Player
This tortuous tutorial will walk you through the steps of changing the screen size (resolution) and improving the colors in your VMware player’s guest OS. The guest OS is assumed to be a Windows variant (e.g., Windows 2000, Windows XP, etc).
I start off by assuming you have installed the latest version of VMware Player and you have installed a windows based virtual machine that runs in the player. But you’re disappointed because you’re having an experience like mine:
When I go to display properties settings, I’m only allowed 16 colors and the screen area slider only offers 640 by 480 and 800 by 600. But when I change it to 800×600, and click ok, when I come back to the display settings, it has gone back to 640×480.
Well, the answer is simple enough. You need to install the VMware tools for the VMware Player.
Here’s how to do that:
Mr. Hutchinson provides a good overview of the process for Linux host OS. We just need to adapt it for a Windows host OS:
1. Download the latest “Archived Version” of VMware Workstation in “.tar.gz” format at http://www.vmware.com/download/ws/. You do not need to be registered nor have a VMware Workstation license key to download this version.
However VMware kept asking me to register and stuff. I found downloading this file directly was adequate instead:
http://download3.vmware.com/software/wkst/VMware-workstation-5.5.0-18463.tar.gz
Next locate and extract the windows.iso VMware Tools image from the tarball.
Next you’ll need to either write the iso to a CD or mount the iso since we want to get at the files on it.
This daemons program worked for me for mounting an ISO in windows, and conveniently the guest OS even detected the mounted iso. (Warning it seems kinda spyware-ish to me, but that was just my impression. Be careful to at least uncheck the optional toolbar program 
)
Now, in your guest OS, run setup.exe from the mounted drive and install VMware tools.
For me, right after install, my display settings had a lot more color and resolution options and the settings stuck after I changed them.