FYI for anyone sitll following this community, this issue still occurs in 5.0.3, though not consistently. I have been able to wake my machine and have unity still work. I suspect it might have something to do with my use of a thunderbolt monitor in conjunction with coming out of sleep mode.
At any rate, the solution has been posted earlier in this thread so I don't intend to take credit for this, but an easy fix is:
1. go to ths system tray, kill vmware tools
2. restart vmware tools: create a shortcut with the following in the target field: "C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Tools\vmtoolsd.exe" -n vmusr
Hope this helps others afflicted with the same problem.
Update: I've confirmed it has nothing to do with my thunderbolt monitor; I used the laptop today, and after coming out of sleep, the unity problem presented itself. The thunderbolt monitor was not used today at all.