MS-DOS VM can't see a mounted iso file

[Yossu]

I created a new VM, and installed MS-DOS. I would like to install Windows 95 over this. I have an iso file for the installation, but cannot get MS-DOS to recognise it.

The VM settings show that the mounted CD is available...

...but no matter what drive letter I type into MS-DOS, I can't see the CD. A: and B: give a general failure, and anything else (other than C: obviously, and up to about H: which was as far as I got) gives invalid drive specification.

Anyone any idea how I get MS-DOS to see the CD?

Thanks

[RDPetruska]

Have you installed a CD-ROM driver in the DOS VM yet?  By default, DOS does not recognize optical drives.

[mickanoor]

You have to load a CD-ROM driver in MS-DOS before it can be accessed with a drive letter. Most commonly this is MSCDEX.EXE with the right parameters. There was also the aternate OAKCDROM.SYS driver which is loaded via the DOS CONFIG.SYS file. Below are examples of how either of these are used.

I have not personally tested this but many discussions sugest this does NOT work as expected in VMWare Workstation. 

[autoexec.bat ]
MSCDEX /D:MSCD001 /L:D

[config.sys ]
DEVICE=C:\DOS\OAKCDROM.SYS /D:MSCD001

[Yossu]

@RDPetruska No, I didn't know I had to. Please see my reply to mickanoor.

Thanks

[Yossu]

@mickanoor Thanks for the reply.

I tried adding the line for MSDDEX to autoexec.bat, but it gave an error "Device driver not found: 'MSCD001'.
No valid CDROM device drivers selected

I didn't try the second option, as I couldn't find a file named OAKCDROM.SYS anywhere, so assumed that would fail as well.

What do I do now? Thanks again.

[RDPetruska]

Do a search for Zamba's 3-in-1 pack.  This contains a floppy with the CD-ROM driver installation, and a CD-ROM with many good drivers and utilities needed for DOS in a virtual machine.

[Yossu]

@RDPetruska Hmm, can't find that. Loads of results for Samba, which is a Linux-related thing, and loads of completely irrelevant results. The closest I found was a post in an old thread on this forum asking if anyone knew of a download link for this page, but there weren't any replies.

Any more ideas? Thanks again

[Yossu]

Just found a copy of OAKCDROM.SYS on computerhope.com, but can't work out how to get the VM to see it. At the moment, the only drive it can see is its own C: drive.

[RDPetruska]

Just put it on a floppy disk.  Or a blank floppy image, if needed.  Workstation can create a blank floppy.  Tools like WinImage can write to them, etc.

[Yossu]

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[Yossu]

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[Yossu]

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[Yossu]

Right, after some fiddling, I managed to get OAKCDROM.SYS onto my DOS VM, but when I added the line into config.sys, I got the same error as before, that device driver not found MSCD001.

What do I do now?

Thanks again.

[Yossu]

I realised that I needed to edit both config.sys and autoexec.bat (previously thought it was either/or), so tried again.

Autoexec.bat now contains...

LOADHIGH=C:\DOS\MSCDEX /D:MSC001

...and config.sys contains...

DEVICEHIGH=C:\DOS\OAKCDROM.SYS /D:MSC001

When I restart the VM, I get the following...

It looks like the device driver MSCD001 is there, but LOADHIGH doesn't find it.

By the way, I tried both the way you suggested (ie MSCDEX /D:MSCD001 /L:D) and the way I saw it elsewhere (as shown above, with LOADHIGH= before), as well as both DEVICE=C:\DOS\OAKCDROM.SYS /D:MSCD001 and DEVICEHIGH as shown above, but the result was the same.

Thanks again for any help you can give

[a_p_]

It looks looks like there's a typo in the device name. MSCD001 vs. MSC001

André

[Yossu]

@a_p_ Ah, well spotted! I had copied what was suggested before, and didn't spot what was in the output in my DOS window.

All working now, thanks very much.