Hi Beej666,
With regards to email updates, by default you should get email notifications of any thread in which you respond.
Does it help if you go to the top right of this page and select "receive email notifications" under the actions menu?
Then in regards with your clipboad problem. I do have that sometimes as well.
One thing to check for is that in Windows XP you should find two instances of vmtoolsd.exe running when opening task manager. One running under the system account and another one running as your user account.
If the vmtoolsd.exe running under your user account is missing then you cannot copy&paste between host and guest.
You can actually start that process yourself by hand using the following command:
"C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Tools\vmtoolsd.exe" -n vmusr
After running that command there should be 2 vmtoolsd.exe's running again and the ability to copy&paste between host and guest should be restored.
Personally I created a small batch file for that and added a shortcut to that. 
I rarely need it, but when I do, it is just point, click, and use my clipboard.
Hope this helps,
--
Wil