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jebarber
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Can't access a CD-Rom using client device

Whenever I try to use the client device to access a CD-Rom I get an error when trying to browse the CD from the VM. I set the VM to use the client device then from the console I click "Virtual CD-ROM" and select either "Connect D:" or "Connect to ISO image...", same result either way. If I open My Computer on the VM, I can see that it sees the correct CD, it displays the correct name of the CD. but when I try to access it I get an error saying "D:\ is not accessible. Incorrect function." VC version 2.0.2 and I have the latest VMware tools installed.

Any thoughts?

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BryanMcC
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Expert

For troubleshooting have you tried to access the CD from another VM? And if you get the sam eresult how about accessing the CD from another client on another machine using its CDROM drive.

Basically I would try to rule out issues on the Client or that particular VM first.

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jebarber
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I have tried other VMs and other CDs, I have not tried other clients, I'll give that a shot and see what happens.

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jebarber
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OK, I tried other clients, same thing. I realized it was a DVD I was trying to access and not a CD so I thought maybe that was it and tried a few CDs, Nope same result.

I tried a couple older VMs that had been around for a while and still had older VMware tools installed, worked fine, I was able to access the CD. I tried a newer VM although not as new as the first VM but probably deployed from the same image but an older version of the image, it had outdated VMware tools installed as well; could not access the CD.

So, it seems it is not realated to the version of VMware tools, it is not a DVD vs CD problem, it is not client, vm, or host specific.

The only common denominator I see is the original image the servers were deployed from.

The original image was a VM built from scratch, installed Windows Server 2003 R2 from CD, patched it up, installed a few utils we put on all our servers, syspreped it, shut it down, converted to template.

I have a couple times converted it back to a VM and patched it up again, updated VMware tools, then syspreped and converted it back to a template.

If I connect the VM to the host's CD-Rom drive it works fine.

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BryanMcC
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This may sound a little flakey but try uninstalling the CDROM from device manager in the OS and then using the add new hardware wizard icon to reinstall it..

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jebarber
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Ok, I got it working.

I tried uninstalling the CD-Rom but that didn't work. So, I went to try removing the CD-Rom via edit settings. That's when I noticed a setting I hadn't noticed before, Passthrough IDE or Emulate IDE.

It was set to emulate, which must be the default since I never changed it and all my other VMs are set to emulate, even thought it says passthrough is recommended. Why would they recommend passthrough and then make emulate the default? Anyway, I changed it to passthrough and it worked.

Interesting though that it did not work when I tried connect to an ISO image on my client PC, but I suspect it has something to do with it being an ISO of a DVD that probably has some sort of copy protection.

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BryanMcC
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Good catch... I in the fast track course right now and I will take a look. If I am not mistaken though all of my VMs in production use the pass through. I will bring this up though.

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