Cant boot from CD

[jasongittens]

Ive spent my whole saturday looking through the forum to find out why my VM will not boot Windows XP Professional from CD. Instead not matter what I do (going into BIOS and changing boot sequence to cdrom) it boots from network AMD (whatever that means). I came across some information regarding setting cdrom to emulation but there wasnt any detail on how to set it.

i have a macbook running OS X 10.4.8

Please help on this issue!

[KevinG]

I assume that you are using the VMware for the MAC and not VMware Server

[jasongittens]

hmmm..im not sure..how can i tell? my friend directed me to this site http://www.vmware.com/products/beta/fusion/ and i downloaded the program

[KevinG]

Moving posting from VMware Server forum to Fusion forum

[rcardona2k · Accepted solution]

You don't have a lot of detail in your question but the likely reason you can't boot from CD is you don't have media captured and connected to the VM.

While the VM is running in the Virtual Machines menu you should have a CD-ROM virtual device with two menu items checked: "Using physical CD-ROM" and "Connected" checked. If these items are present and correct, then here's what you do during the boot sequence: reset the VM, quickly insert your media, click in the VM window, press Esc during POST to get the boot order menu and select "3. CD-ROM Drive", the cd boot sequence should display "Press any key to boot from CD...", then press any key and you should finally be booting from CD.

[jasongittens]

Lovely! Windows installed! got this time thanks a whole lot!

[jwycoff]

I have the same issue. But cannot get your fix to work. I never get the prompt to boot from CD. Any other things I can try?

Thanks!

[admin]

The BIOS flashes by really quickly, you have to be fast. Are you able to get into the BIOS or not?

[IngoLantschner]

sorry, but I can not get into the BIOS/Bootmenu. I do not have a chance to choose between HD and CD-ROM. Even if I press Esc very fast, also tried fullcreenmode and keeping the Esc-key pressed. Any idea?

TIA, Ingo.

[admin]

You can edit your vmx to include bios.forceSetupOnce = "TRUE"[/code] to have the next boot automatically drop into the BIOS.

[IngoLantschner]

Thanks, that worked!

[alecalixto]

I tried all these stuffs (both virtual CD-Rom options checked, entering CD when booting VM, then pressing ESC and choosing CD-ROM) but still not booting from WinXP Pro CD. I tested on my other Windows PC and the installation window appeard normally.

What can I dooooooooooooo???

[TheLoneVM]

alecalixto: Do you have an original (silver) Windows installation disk, or a backup copy? A possible cause is that your CD itself is not bootable. Can you boot to the Windows CD on your Windows PC?

[alecalixto]

Is a backup, but it boots normally on my PC running Windows...

[Chris_Kimball]

Same problem, can't find installation disk. But it says something about an amd network loader. Tried both Windows 2000 pro and XP SP2 original disks. On dual quad 3 Ghz MacPro OS X 10.4.10 . I'm using the Installation assistant.

I hope it isn't necessary to dicker with the BIOS to install a system.

Thanks,

Chris

[Chris_Kimball]

Oh, it's the virtual BIOS!

I can get into the virtual BIOS ans move CDROM to the top of the list, and save it (F10). But it still goes to the amd network boot.

Some help would be appreciated.

Chris

[eknauft]

Chris (or anyone else hitting this),

We're aware of the problem but have not been able to reproduce in-house. If you could try to boot a VM from an install CD, and then upload the file called vmware.log from that VM's directory, that would help us a lot. It should reside in $HOME/Documents/Virtual Machines/My VM's Name/vmware.log. Also the vmx file might be helpful too.

Thanks!

-Eric

[permlaw]

Have you been able to repropuce in house.

Nothing i have done allows me to boot my XP instalation disk on new VMs since the last beta came out.

Never had any problem before.

Also unable to install tools.

Currently using old VM created with previous bets in the new beta but had to uninstall the tools in order for it to work. Don't know if these 2 problems are related.Would like to pre-purchase but need to know that I can install XP on the new VM.Please help!

Permlaw

[vincentck]

I have exactly the same problem, can't find proven bootable XP disk. But it does run into "Network boot from AMD........" directly no matter i pressed ESC/F2 non-stop.

Pls help with the attached vmware.log file, and the said unwanted network boot screen. Pls help.

Thank you.

Vincent

[RDPetruska]

The BIOS of the virtual machine will always fall back to network boot if it cannot find a bootable floppy, cd, or hard disk... EXACTLY the same way a physical PC will.

Did you click your mouse inside the guest's window while it was powering on before hitting the Esc or F2 key? If not, then your host received those keystrokes, and had no action assigned to them and therefore ignored them.