New to Linux (and FC2) Need help w/ VMWare

[nickehl]

Hi guys,

I'm brand new to Linux (and FC2) and I have to say that I love it so far! But today I installed VMWare build 4.5.2 and I am having a devil of a time getting it to recognize my CD drive.
Pertinent informaiton is as follows:

Fedora Core 2
(Kernel version 2.6.5)
VMware build 4.5.2
IBM Think Pad t42
1.7ghz Pentium M
512mb of RAM
w/ IBM's standard DVD/CDRW combo drive.

So the problem is as follows: I successfully installled VMware and got it to start up a virtual machine, however, when I try to install an OS (in this case Win 98 SE), it finds no boot record on the disc. After a little poking around, I'm finding that despite the fact that VMware lists my CD drive in the profile of the virtual machine, it fails to load/find it.

Any help would be greatly appreciated as I have gotten a successful install of vmware and the guest OS on Windows (in my other partition), but can't seem to get the darn thing to work here in Linux. I am trying very hard to dump windows all together (other than for testing purposes) so any help to get me on my way to a linux-only lifestyle would be fantastic!

Thanks!

[sonicbuddha]

Have you tried the "legacy support" option when configuring the virtual drive? Also you should make sure that the virtual drive is pointing at the right device file for your cdrom. Compare it to the device file listed in your /etc/fstab. Finally, make sure your boot order in your virtual bios lists the cdrom before the virtual hard drive.
VMware is a very useful tool; I hope to upgrade to 4.5.2 sometime soon. I am currently using a patched version of 4.5.1 to emulate several "test configurations" and oses myself.