Can you please help me get rid of the annoying "to release input, press ctrl-alt" popup balloons?

Using VMWare Workstation 8.0.1 build-528992

Host OS is Windows 7

Guest OS is CentOs

Working in full-screen mode

Hey all,

For some reason, these stupid hint balloons keep popping up when I'm in full screen mode.  They either say "to release input, press ctrl-alt" or "To direct input to this virtual machine type ctrl-g".

I have "Enable All Hints" and "Show Enabled Hints" unchecked, and I have this line in my .VMX file :

hints.hideAll = "TRUE"

Could you please help me get rid of these popup balloons?  They keep popping up and I can't make them stay away.  It's really annoying.  And looking back in the help forums, it looks like this has been a problem for years.  What's the deal here?