Booting up from DVD ISO doesn't work

[galapogos]

Hi,

I have a Ubuntu 14.04 L TS 64bit guest OS running on VMWare Workstation 12 Player on a Windows 10 host. Recently I've been unable to boot up to the guest OS due to /sbin/init not found, leading to kernel panic, so I thought I'd boot to a 14.04 Live DVD. I browsed to the ISO file in the VM settings, checked "Connect at power on", then upon boot up, I entered the boot menu and selected the CD drive to boot up to. However, the VM still boots up to the hard drive.

How do I boot up to a Live DVD?

Thanks.

[fugrat1]

I'm not sure how it works on player, but when I boot into the BIOS I always make sure that the CD/DVD virtual drive is showing as connected, sometimes restarting the machine can cause problems with this.  Also if you are using player I think you can only run VMs and I'm not sure if you can modify them so you may not be able to resolve the problem without a full version of Workstation

[galapogos]

That was true for older versions of Player, but apparently from not for Workstation 12 Player. I was previously able to modify VM settings. For instance, I increased the HDD size as well as memory size. I also previously managed to boot from the CD drive by modifying boot priority, but I don't know why it isn't working now.

Other than trying the Live CD way, is there any other way to access the file system of the guest OS?

[kevin_007]

Can you add your screenshot of your BIOS settings of the Boot Order tab? In my VMWare Workstation 12 Pro, I use the '+' or '-' to move the boot devices up and down to change the boot order.

[galapogos]

Here. I also used + to bring the CD drive to the top.

[fugrat1]

Can you check that the ISO image is ok?  It may be that it is damaged and is not seen as bootable.  Are you able to create a new VM and test booting from the ISO to check that this works?