I have experienced the same dreadful situation -- after a routine update the virtual machine was no longer able to reach the login screen. If it helps, I can tell that the system had actually booted all right, since I was able to SSH into the VM and run apt-get -y purge to remove the kernel 4.2.0-30; as far as I can tell it was just the GUI which did not start.
Windows 7 host, VMware Workstation 11 and Player 7.1.3, Ubuntu 15.10 guest.
I have experienced the same dreadful situation -- after a routine update the virtual machine was no longer able to reach the login screen. If it helps, I can tell that the system had actually booted all right, since I was able to SSH into the VM and run apt-get -y purge to remove the kernel 4.2.0-30; as far as I can tell it was just the GUI which did not start.
Windows 7 host, VMware Workstation 11 and Player 7.1.3, Ubuntu 15.10 guest.