You are brilliant! I'd kiss you if you were right in front of me!
Ok, so I managed to uninstall Avast and reinstall VMware Player. Now, however, when I try to open my ISO I get an "Error while powering on: Transport (VMDB) error -44: Message.
The following error occured when starting VMWare Player.
W32AuthConnectionLaunch: Reply error "Process creation failed".
I'll go over the link you posted to see if I can find anything there.