To change the network driver in a 32 Bit VM do the following:
1. From the VM download and extract the Intel e1000 network driver for your Windows 32 Bit OS here
2. Shut down the VM
3. If you wan’t to be damm sure your VM doesn’t crash make a Snapshot
4. Connect to the host with ssh and edit the VM’s vmx file
5. Find the first entry that starts with ethernet0 and add the below line just before
ethernet0.virtualDev = “e1000”
6. Save and exit the vmx file
7. Power on the VM
8. When promted for the driver to the network card browse to the folder PRO1000 in the extracted folder.
P.S.
64 Bit VM’s uses the e1000 driver as default.
Definitely make sure you do the snapshot. I was playing around with this on some test systems and had 2 out of the 5 crash. I think it was a mistake I did on the first two (not sure yet, reviewing), but snapshots are important.