Can't ssh to my local VM (timeout)

I'm using an old redhat virtual machine with VMware Player. I used to be able to connect it using PuTTY, but for some reason now I can't. Here's what I do: 1. I use ifconfig to get the IP address 2. I ping the IP address and get a response just to make sure 3. I check that iptables accepts TCP connections through port 22 4. I use PuTTY to connect to the IP address I got from step 2 It used to work, now it doesn't. I didn't change anything but everytime I reset the iptables rules gets deleted and I have to redo it, but it still doesn't work. I get "connection timed out" error. Any ideas?