I too had exactly the same problem with XP and 4.1.4. Often when VMware gave busy icon, the Mac environment lost its cursor. Mac worked fine otherwise, but one had to guess where the cursor was! Individual Mac applications, once selected, had a working cursor. Loading a snapshot, once I managed to navigate to it, always cures instantly - but the issue returns after time. I installed Windows Server 2008 and ever since everything has been fine.
XP remains there, as I need to run a native 16 bit program environment occasionally, and remains troublesome when it runs.
.... so my problem at least (which sounds *exactly* like yours) is not Mac related. I too thought host hardware might be the issue, but an upgrade to 8GB still did not cure.