“Dictionary problem.” Error with VMPlayer

I'm pretty new to using vmware virtualization (been a virtualbox user) so I'm hoping you guys can help me out. I recently got an external usb disk containing a vm for a client, downloaded vmplayer, set it up with "Open a Virtual Machine", ran it, easy as pie.

After working with it a bit this morning, I shut the VM down and now trying to start it back up again I get this:

I tried removing the vm from my library, now it happens whenever I try to add it back in. In the meantime, I can still access other virtual machines so it seems like the problem might be with the virtual disk.

So two questions:

• This is obviously not a very helpful error message. Where can I go to get more information? My Application EventLog doesn't contain anything from VMWare.
• What steps can I take to fix the problem?

Edit: A couple more pieces of information.

• I did not take any snapshots. I don't think VM Player even has that ability.
• I have a zip file of (what I assume) is the state of the VM when it was sent to me. I cannot unzip it as it is huge and simply requires more HD space than I have available but I did extract the vmx file and examine it. Other than the UUIDs and the fact that mine reads cleanShutdown = "FALSE" they are identical.

• The log contains the following lines

  Jun 23 10:11:18.080: vmx| SNAPSHOT: SnapshotConfigInfoRead: Unable to load dict from 'E:….\MachineName.vmsd'.

  Jun 23 10:11:18.080: vmx| SNAPSHOT: SnapshotConfigInfoRead failed for file 'E:….\MachineName.vmx': Dictionary problem (6)

  Jun 23 10:11:18.082: vmx| SNAPSHOT: Snapshot_TimeStampTiers failed: Dictionary problem (6)