DVD read failure in Workstation 8

[Mikros]

I use VM Workstation to test installations of our software from a DVD. The last round of testing was in December 2011 and everything worked smoothly. This month (February 2012), I had problems reading the installation DVD's and it took me a while to track it down. So I want to share this experience since I couldn't find the exact problem in the forums, but I found related info that helped me out.

The problem exhibited itself as: 1) the O/S not finding all the content on the DVD, which is 2.16Gb; 2) changing teh displayed file names to old ISO 9660 format (all uppercase with no spaces); and 3) failing to run applications with various esoteric messages.

Since December, I had upgraded my Workstation from 7.1 to 8.0, but I am still cloning the same VM's from 7.1. I found a forum article that talked about problems with this scenario, and I decided to try the solution mentioned - and it worked!

The solution: Go to "Edit virutal machine settings", CD/DVD device, and click the "Advanced" button. Select the "Legacy emulation" checkbox and save the change. After that, everything is working like it did last December.

I hope anyone with this problem gets to this message before doing what I did, which was: 1) writing another disc (maybe it was a bad disc!); 2) writing another disc with different software (maybe my free software is flaky!); 3) trying a different VM on a different Host machine (maybe something in the VM got corrupted!); and 4) writing another disc from another PC (maybe my drive is failing!)

[continuum]

yes - thats a known issue.
With Workstation 8 legacy emulation should be set as the default as it works for most users.

[dariusd]

Hi Mikros, and welcome to the VMware Communities!

There is a defect in VMware Workstation 8.0.0 which caused specific models of host CD/DVD drive to confuse Workstation unless Legacy Emulation was enabled.  That defect is believed to be addressed in VMware Workstation 8.0.1.

If you have already updated to at least VMware Workstation 8.0.1 (or newer) and are still encountering this issue with your CD/DVD drive, I'd be most interested to know the model of CD/DVD drive you are using and the OS you are attempting to install, so we can attempt to reproduce and isolate the issue.  If you haven't yet updated to VMware Workstation 8.0.1 (EDIT:) or newer, doing so may resolve the problem for you.

Cheers,

--

Darius

Message was edited by: dariusd to clarify that the issue is fixed in 8.0.1 so although 8.0.2 is out. it's unlikely that upgrading from 8.0.1 to 8.0.2 will help.  Thanks continuum!

[continuum]

@ Darius
why do you recommend to use 8.0.1 and not 8.0.2 ?

[dariusd]

Sorry, the first reference to "8.0.1" said "or newer" but the second reference lacked such a qualifier.  I had no particular reason to recommend 8.0.1 over 8.0.2 -- the only intended distinction was that 8.0.0 has this known defect and 8.0.1 is believed to address it, as mentioned in its release notes.  If the user has 8.0.0, upgrading may help with this particular problem; If the user has 8.0.1, upgrading is unlikely to help.  I'll edit my earlier post to clarify this.

Thanks,

--

Darius