Hey there,
I am actively trying a similar set up from my end as close to yours as I can.
Obviously, I don't have the same set of files on the OS X side that I am sharing though.
However, maybe we can refine your testing somewhat? How about you enable the real-time scanning in Windows defender but modify the settings to exclude those paths or drives you have mapped for the VMware Shared Folders. Then lets see if that allows you to work without intermittent hangs.
Then we can fine grain this further maybe narrowing down to the exclusions and see how far we get before the intermittent hangs reappear.
It could be only one part of a share that is causing the issue. On the other hand it could be all or just any. It would be helpful to know which if any make a diffierence.
You are providing some great help, thanks.
Also at some stage we might be able to monitor the VM file IO by installing the process monitor utililty from www.sysinternals.com to see what is going on when we get these hangs too. You can then save the trace as a log file and send it to me in a private message.