I assume you've tried restarting the VM?

Check the ports are open (external port scan of the vm) and apache is listening (netstat internally):

netstat -nltp

Try restarting apache:

/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

If apache is having problems it should let you know (via some sort of error message). You could also try checking the apache error log (/var/log/apache2/error.log I think).

But here's a solution to the error apache gives. Open the httpd.conf file

nano /etc/apache2/httpd.conf

This file will probably be blank (it is by default), add this line at the top

ServerName localhost

and then restart apache

/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

That should stop apache complaning, but I'm pretty sure that wouldn't cause lack of connectability.

What were to results of the netstat command I suggested above? Did you do a port scan of the machine?

When you ping it, I assume that was with the dns name (rather than IP) - if not make sure it pings ok with both. Also perhaps check the IP address is what it should be - this can be done from the confconsole or with the ifconfig command.

PS Until we actually know what's wrong, I'm not sure whether removing the update will actually solve your problems. The only way to be sure would be to either try and see, or to just revert to a snapshot. If you do that, I urge you to take a snapshot of the current machine, so at your conveinience you can work out what the problem is (so you can eventually upgrade VMtools hassle free).

To be honest I'm sort surprised that installing the new VM tools made this much mess.

Could you please post your interfaces file (/etc/network/interfaces).

If you have USB passthrough then thats probably easiest to just attach the file here, otherwise you may need to run

nano /etc/network/interfaces

(or replace nano for your favourite terminal text editor) and do a screenshot of your VM window. For Windows - <Alt><Prnt Scrn> with the VM Window active then <Ctrl><V> in your favourite graphics editor to paste (you may need to resize and/or adjust quality to get a small file, which is still easy to read).

Hopefully that'll help us see whats going on.

Use eth0 as a template. Make sure you change the "dhcp" to "static" and double check the gateway and nameserver are correct (although I would assume they're ok).

Once done, save (<Ctrl><X> in nano) and restart networking:

/etc/init.d/networking restart

This is a strange one for sure! As its running in a VM, it should only be getting (virtual) NICs offered to it by ESX. If ESX is offering it then one would think that it would work.

You could try to just bring eth1 down and see if that helps at all, ie

ifconfig eth1 down

It may be worth bringing them both down (same line but substitute 'eth0' for 'eth1') and then just bring one of them back up (substitute 'up' for 'down') and test. Repeat for other NIC as required.

I am unfamiliar with ESX but I would imagine that you should be able to remove/disable from there somewhere (sort of like a virtual BIOS). If possible remove both NICs offered, reboot your appliance, then re-enable one, reboot appliance, check, next one etc.

Something else that may be worth trying is simply to comment out (ie put a "#" in front of) all the lines relating to eth1 in the networking interfaces file.

Other than those I'm fast running out of ideas. If nothing here gets you headed in the right direction, then I can only think of 2 plans:

1) Create a new VM appliance and somehow migrate your data across. Don't forget to upgrade/install VMtools first!

2) See if you can get some advice from someone more experienced than myself. I would highly recommend Ubuntu Forums (as thats what TKL is basically - 8.04.3) although because there's so much activity over there, you'll probably need to be patient.