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mattad
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Booting VM from USB stick: USB not detected/locked by hostOS

Assume I have a running Win7 guestOS inside a Win7 hostOS. guestOS runs fine when started from vmdk hard disc.

Now I plugin a bootable USB stick and restart the guestOS VM.

When the VM BIOS screen appears I press ESC to get the Boot menu and select

"Removable device" since I want to boot the guestOS from USB stick.

Unfortunately guestOS  VM does not recognize the USB stick and boots "as normal" from its vmdk hard disc.

Yes, the boot sequence in VM BIOS lists "removable device" on top as well (this shouldn't matter when I press ESC in Boot screen)

And yes, VMplayers menu

Player-->Removable Devices-->Sandisk

is connected (after boot).

It seems to me that the hostOS locks somehow the USB stick so that it is not available for the guestOS VM.

How do I tell otherwise the VM to boot from USB stick if present?

Matt

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mofr
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you can use Plop Boot Manager to achieve your goal.

How to Boot a VMware Virtual Machine from a USB Drive it is very easy to do. 

---------------------------------------------------------- MCITP: Enterprise Messaging Administrator MCSE: Messaging VCP4 Blog: http://vforv.me/ Twitter: @sgaldava

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mofr
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you can use Plop Boot Manager to achieve your goal.

How to Boot a VMware Virtual Machine from a USB Drive it is very easy to do. 

---------------------------------------------------------- MCITP: Enterprise Messaging Administrator MCSE: Messaging VCP4 Blog: http://vforv.me/ Twitter: @sgaldava
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mattad
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Great. It works.

Thank you

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continuum
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WS 10 and VMplayer 6 now have USB-boot-support when you set
firmware = "efi"

Do not change that for existing VMs as your existing guests may not boot with that entry


________________________________________________
Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...

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WoodyZ
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Also to add to what Ulii said, the firmware = "efi" .vmx configuration file option is not officially supported in VMware Player/Workstation! Smiley Wink

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generalzod
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Will it only boot UEFI-bootable USB drives, or any bootable USB stick? (For example sticks created in the Win XP days require setting the BIOS of a modern physical Windows 8 machine to "legacy mode" to boot properly.)

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continuum
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firmware = "efi"
enables USB-boot from USB-disks or sticks that are prepared with UEFI-bootable boot loaders

firmware = "efi"
efi.legacyBoot.enabled = "true"

enables USB-boot with bootloaders like grub4dos and others - so yes - you can use bootsticks created in gthe XP-days

Note: this feature is neither documented nor supported - so have fun on your own risk


________________________________________________
Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...

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