I didn't try a FireWire camera, but I imagine that this would be even worse.

As for all of that, I wish Fusion would ignore Firewire altogether since it is not supported. It made for a confusing session as I found out what not to do. Thankfully, the same DVD burner box can connect using USB 2.0, so it wasn't a big deal except I had to pull out my USB hub. (After a few reboots) This is why I complained -- Fusion acted a little buggy when presented with the drive connected to FireWire.

FIrst, you need to setup shared folders in VMware Fusion while your VM is shut down. Like I share My Mac username and make it available in Windows. There is some sort of option to make this sharing avaialble when you power the machine on, I believe. I make mine read/write but that is just me.

Now, after you boot Windows and go to Windows Explorer, you will find a new spot in Desktop -> My Network Places -> Entire Network... you will see VMware Shared folders -> .host ->Shared Folders --> Your Mac username

Right Click "Shared Folders" and one obscure choice is called "Map Network Drive" which will bring you up a choice of drive letters. It will populate the "Folder" and you pick the "Drive" letter. You will possibly want to choose to have it mapped every time you login to Windows, as long as this is what you want. I am describing pretty normal file sharing under Windows.. not too unusual except the VMware specific folder.

Next time you want to map a drive, you could click (the Explorer menu) and select "Tools" -> Map Network Drive, and you could actually type in the "folder" -- but I normally copy and paste it from the "Address" field that shows at the top of Windows Explorer. This is because the first right-click trick I told you about only works for network places at the very top, not on sub folders. For example, I might use drive K: for a folder on my own computer that is 7 steps down from the C: drive... it is a shortcut to it, so to speak. I had to manualy enter it in the Map Network Drive popup as if I was connecting to a foreign computer. \\Computer\C-Drive\MyShare\Blah1\Folder\Folder3\Deeper\Down\Here

server or

joe or

customer-23461 or

192.168.0.55

Doing this will show you the computer's shared folders if they have some, as long as you have a username and password for their computer. If they have a printer you like, you can right-click it and add it as a network printer. Sometimes, an administrator can do this:

\\server\C$ and it will show you their entire C: drive.

You can actually type these network servers in any Windows Explorer window where it normally displays the local drive and folder. (So you don't have to do this from the Start->run box)