With Red Hat Enterprise Linux on top of VMware, why do I get "unregister_netdevice: waiting for eth0 to become free. Usage count=2" messages when attempting to reboot or install VMware Tools?

Solution Verified - Updated -

Issue

The following error message occurs when trying to install vmware tools (this prevents installation) or when attempting to reboot the system (this prevents the reboot but a hard reset allows the system to boot):

    unregister_netdevice: waiting for eth0 to become free. Usage count=2 
    RPC: error 101 connecting to server xyz

Environment

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4

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