i found a way to get your files back it worked for me took me like 2 hours to do if you have another vmware that had the same os as the one that lags now make a copy of it
take the lagging vmdk and attach it as a secondary hard drive now that copy i told you to make earlier put it on a external hard drive
install inside the vmware winmount connect your harddrive to the virtual machine and run win mount go to file and open and click the vmdk file on your hard drive it doesnt matter what its mounted as cause it will still be C: in the end using this method double click the vmdk file or the folder it was in and try to delete as much as possible
now go to the secondary hard drive the laggy one that already in the vmware through my computer or whatever it is on your os and copy as many files as you can over to the vmdk file thats open in win mount unmount it power off
copy the vmdk file back to your comp from the hard drive attach it to the vmware as the primary hard drive power on and walla no more lagging
if this doesnt work you missed some files
dont worry about the files that give you access denied errors those are fine but you have to go into the folders at that point and delete the files that dont give errors if it still doesnt work contact me at michaelfox648@gmail.com as this method worked for me and now my vmware is back thank god i had another version with the same os otherwise my files would have been gone