yeah i know but in the VM is more difficult 
i try to figure out…
I don’t know vmware so I don’t know what it means when you see that grey screen.
It might just be the display manager not starting.
It’s really just the same procedure, VM or real machine.
At the Grub prompt, press “e” for edit - as it is also explained at the bottom of that same screen.
proceed to the end of the line that starts with
linux /vmlinuz_xxx ... and usually ends with udev.log_priority=3 ro
add “3” to the end of that line, so that it looks like this:
...dev.log_priority=3 ro 3
press
CTRLx
to boot with the changed kernel command line
(as is also written there)
What this does (or should do) is
boot to a TTY but will not even be trying to start the display server.
Then you can log in at the prompt and have at it 
A console filemanager like mc might be of much help there, if you are not familiar.
I’m familiar with command line
good on you!
mc is still a useful tool to have
Many have never heard of it’s existence … that’s why I mentioned it.