One has to question when VMware will finally notice that it's a better idea to simply not package ESXi VMware Tools with workstation/player components (no, I do not want my VMs to share files with the host, which won't work anyways).
But that's an interesting point you have there if this fixed your issue.
As suggested by the vSphere Security Hardening Guide (http://www.vmware.com/files/xls/security/HardeningGuide-vSphere50-v1.2.xlsx), there are a couple of supposedly unexposed unity features that can be explicitly disabled through VMX-parameters.
It would be interesting if can you test whether this issue is still present on a VM with these parameters set (and having been power-cycled), while keeping the original unity.dll in place:
isolation.tools.unity.disable=true
isolation.tools.unity.push.update.disable=true
isolation.tools.unity.taskbar.disable=true
isolation.tools.unity.windowContents.disable=true
isolation.tools.unityActive.disable=true
isolation.tools.unityInterlockOperation.disable=true
There may be even more undocumented parameters pertaining unity features, but these have been stated in the Hardening Guide.