Cannot Connect CentOS VM to Internet (NAT Connection)

So after fighting the VMWare network giant for the past day, I decided to give in and ask for help. I have a CentOS 6 image running on Windows 7 using a NAT on VMWare Workstation 8.0.2 build-591240, and for some reason, I can no longer connect to the internet with a static IP address. This seems to only to apply to static, and not DHCP, which tells me it's either: some program on my Windows 7 OS that's blocking the connection for that IP address, or there's something weird that happened to my configuration on the CentOS image. I didn't know if this was due to a yum update, so I tried reinstalling VMWare tools. This didn't seem to fix the issue. I've also tried the following: - Made sure the VMnet connection was connected (stupid, but had to check... also I can connect to the internet with DHCP) - Made sure my firewall on Windows allowed for VMware to connect to the internet - I've seen/read that Windows sometimes blocks ping requests, so I tried going to www.google.com in Firefox, this got a "Server not found response"... so do I have to do something different for DNS?? - I checked the registry of my Windows machine, I only have 1 entry for a default gateway Like I said, this seemed to happen out of the blue. The image could connect to the internet before with no issue. Is anyone aware of a CentOS update that might cause this? I've added my configuration below to save some debugging cycles: ``` [root@MyCentOS ~]# ifconfig eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0C:29:A0:51:BD inet addr:192.168.88.128 Bcast:192.168.88.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:683 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:67 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:64242 (62.7 KiB) TX bytes:8055 (7.8 KiB) lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1 RX packets:1049 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:1049 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:68417 (66.8 KiB) TX bytes:68417 (66.8 KiB) [root@MyCentOS ~]# cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 DEVICE="eth0" BOOTPROTO="static" IPV6INIT="no" NM_CONTROLLED="no" ONBOOT="yes" IPADDR=192.168.88.128 NETMASK=255.255.255.0 GATEWAY=192.168.88.2 TYPE="Ethernet" [root@MyCentOS ~]# cat /etc/sysconfig/network NETWORKING=yes HOSTNAME=MyCentOS GATEWAY=192.168.88.2 [root@MyCentOS ~]# service iptables status iptables: Firewall is not running. [root@MyCentOS ~]# service ip6tables status ip6tables: Firewall is not running. [root@MyCentOS ~]# cat /etc/selinux/config # This file controls the state of SELinux on the system. # SELINUX= can take one of these three values: # enforcing - SELinux security policy is enforced. # permissive - SELinux prints warnings instead of enforcing. # disabled - No SELinux policy is loaded. SELINUX=disabled # SELINUXTYPE= can take one of these two values: # targeted - Targeted processes are protected, # mls - Multi Level Security protection. SELINUXTYPE=targeted [root@MyCentOS ~]# ping 192.168.88.2 PING 192.168.88.2 (192.168.88.2) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from 192.168.88.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=128 time=0.391 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.88.2: icmp_seq=2 ttl=128 time=0.271 ms ^C --- 192.168.88.2 ping statistics --- 2 packets transmitted, 2 received, 0% packet loss, time 1349ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.271/0.331/0.391/0.060 ms [root@MyCentOS ~]# ping www.google.com ping: unknown host www.google.com [root@MyCentOS ~]# uname -a Linux MyCentOS 2.6.32-431.3.1.el6.x86_64 #1 SMP Fri Jan 3 21:39:27 UTC 2014 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux [root@MyCentOS ~]# vmware-toolbox-cmd -v 8.8.2.10499 (build-590212) ```