Problems with audio CD burning on Windows 7 with VMWorkstation 9

[Mark_Wilson2]

I can’t burn audio files with my current configuration using VMWare 9.0.2

The Host operating system is Windows 7 (x64) and the Guest operating system is also Windows 7 (x64). On the Host I can create audio CDs using Windows Media Player or Nero 9 Essentials.  When I try the same operation on the Guest, both programs fail to write to the audio CD.  The Host's drive is a SATA Blu-ray burner.  I have it connected to the VM as a SCSI drive using these settings and Legacy Emulation is turned off:

scsi1.pciSlotNumber = "224"

scsi1.sasWWID = "50 05 05 6d 66 52 4b 50"

scsi1.present = "TRUE"

scsi1.virtualDev = "lsisas1068"

scsi1:0.present = "TRUE"

scsi1:0.fileName = "G:"

scsi1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-raw"

I tested writing data files from the VM to a CD in the Blu-ray drive in the Host using either Nero 9 Essentials or directly with Windows 7 drag and drop feature, and the data files write and verify correctly in the VM.

As a test I borrowed a USB DVD drive and connected it directly to the running VM.  After Windows 7 detected it in the VM,  I tried both Windows Media Player and Nero 9 Essentials to burn audio CDs from the Guest and it worked fine.

What do I need to do to the VM to make it work with the internal drive on the SATA controller when creating audio CDs?

[WoodyZ]

Mark_Wilson wrote: ... and Legacy Emulation is turned off:

Try it with Legacy Emulation turned on.

[Mark_Wilson2]

Thanks.

I had already tried using Legacy Mode and it didn't work.  According to this documentation http://pubs.vmware.com/workstation-9/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.vmware.ws.using.doc%2FGUID-BDC982CC-3B8A... Legacy Mode causes the drive to operate in read-only mode and you need to be in Normal Mode to be able to burn disks.

When I tried to burn a disk with Legacy Mode on the program reports that the disk is not writable and running a drive test shows that the drive reports it has the ability to read CD-R media but not write CD-R media.

[WoodyZ]

Did you manually set it as a SCSI device or was it set that way automatically?  Have you tried it as an IDE device?

[Mark_Wilson2]

It was originally installed as IDE (which didn't work) so I changed it to a SCSI interface based upon this article http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1251 and this article about VMWare Fusion. http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1004913‎

[WoodyZ]

Well since you can burn data with the internal drive and audio with the external drive it looks like it is more an issue with that particular internal drive then VMware Workstation per se.  Not trying to say it is on no why a VMware issue however since you obviously have the software on the Host and it works from the Host as well, why don't you just use the Host for such functions!

[Mark_Wilson2]

In this case using the host to burn data defeats the purpose of having a VM in the first place.  The only reason that the host and the guest are currently the same OS is for testing purposes.  I wanted to eliminate that variable from the troubleshooting.

From a guest perspective, the only things different are the CD-R drivers.  The USB driver sends audio to an external drive and it works.  The SCSI or IDE CD-R drivers send audio data to an internal drive and they fail.

Thanks.

[lemleyd]

I had struggled with this for quite a while, yanking and twisting on various settings in the ui and the vmx file as suggested in some other posts.

I was only able to get it to work by downgrading workstation to version 7.  (version 8 did not work either).  After downgrading, it worked perfectly.  To me, this suggests a bug in VMware (and a long-standing one at that).

Also, for the record, this problem affected CD burning/erasing..  I could burn DVDs OK.

[Mark_Wilson2 · Accepted solution]

This is definitely a bug with burning Audio CDs.

I re-installed Workstation 7 and Workstation 8 and verified that the problem did not exist in those older builds.

I tested with Workstation 9 and workstation 10.0.1 and audio CD burning fails.

This was reported as a bug to VMWare (Support Request 13403576911) for build 10.0.1 and although it could not be replicated at VMWare, they were able to correct the problem and I've confirmed the fix works on my hardware.  The fix should be in the next update to VMWorkstation which I assume will be 10.0.2