Does workstation 14 really have No way to boot an existing VM to an ISO or USB flash drive?

[SecBob]

There appears to be a huge omission in the Workstation 14 software. I have a Windows 10 pro VM that has a problem booting due to an OS file corruption. That is easily fixable on a PC running Windows 10 because I can boot it to a CD/DVD or a USB Flash drive for repairs. I thought for sure VMware allowed this for a VM. But I can find no way to do it. I CAN add an ISO as a CD/DVD drive connected at power-on, but if I boot to firmware VMware doesn't allow me to change to boot order. Nor is there anywhere else in the workstation software settings for the VM where I can do this. I'm guessing they assume your OS can take that responsibility. But that is ridiculous under most circumstances and impossible when the OS won't boot.

REALLY??? Please, tell me I missed something.

I was able to map the drive, but it maps as a network drive, so I can't run chkdsk on it. Also, when I try to disconnect the mapped drive it hangs Windows file explorer, requiring a reboot.

I was able to boot the host pc to a Paragon Hard disk manager pro flash and map the vm drive there to run some checks, but I don't believe that tool will attempt to fix indexes .

Any ideas?

[daphnissov]

REALLY??? Please, tell me I missed something.

You missed something. Press F2 to enter the BIOS of the VM in question. Navigate to Boot and use +/- to change the boot order.

Above you can see I moved CD-ROM Drive up to the top position. Now, when you mount a bootable ISO, it will boot from that device.

[SecBob]

I tried that. VMware won't take F2 to get to bios. However, there is a power-on option to boot to firmware and I can get to the screen below that way. Unfortunately that screen responds to nothing. I tried +/-, cursor keys, tabs. I am simply locked out.

Just looked again. in right panel of this screen it says "All items on this menu cannot be modified in user mode. …please consult you system supervisor".

The bios never had any passwords set on it. So I went to another screen to create a supervisor password. OK, I's set, but there's no where to ENTER the password to authorize the changes. So I still can't do anything.

[daphnissov]

Then you have an issue with your keyboard/input device stack. If you can't press F2 to get into the BIOS then that is not normal.

[continuum]

> Unfortunately that screen responds to nothing. I tried +/-, cursor keys, tabs. I am simply locked out.
Did you click into the Window with your mouse to activate user input ?