So, I wanted to change it so that ctrl-alt-shift exited control from the VM, and not ctrl-alt. DOS games often have you jumping with ctrl and shooting with alt (or vice versa), so I didn’t want to lose control after a jump and shoot.

After digging, I found that you have to add the following text to preferences.ini, not the vmx file:

pref.hotkey.shift = “true”
pref.hotkey.control = “true”
pref.hotkey.alt = “true”

Add it to the bottom. In XP you can find this somewhereabouts under Documents and Settings\you\Application Data\VMWare. In Windows 7, it’s under Users\You\AppData\VMWare\Roaming.

After this, VMWare Player automatically updates the text to say you have to press Ctrl-Alt-Shift instead of Ctrl-Alt.