Questions:
Are you using Bridged or NAT?
If bridged, are you using DHCP.
Is your host NIC wired or wireless?
When you say you can ping the Internet, do you ping by name or IP address? Like, ping www.yahoo.com.
What do you get from:
nslookup www.yahoo.com?
DNS entries usually get entered into the /etc/resolv.conf file. That would show you what servers it is looking for.
An easy way out is to just use NAT for your VM network card.
Lou