No D: drive on Windows ME

[Mario Rosso]

I can't find drive D: on Windows ME. What do I do now?

[scottgus1]

Check if your VM has an Optical Drive in the Storage settings. Virtualbox defaults to making it on the IDE Secondary Master controller space.

Also, check if your VM's Optical Drive has a CD or ISO in it. Sometimes Windows hides removable drives when there is no media in them. I don't remember if ME does this.

[Mario Rosso]

It still doesn't show...

[scottgus1]

Right-click the VM in the main Virtualbox window's VM list, choose Show in Explorer/Finder/File Manager. Zip the VM's .vbox file (not the .vbox-prev file), and post the zip file, using the forum's Attachments tab. (Configure your host OS to show all extensions if the folder that opens does not show a .vbox file.)

[Mario Rosso]

Here's the file

[scottgus1]

Thanks. You do have a "CD ROM" drive in this VM:

<StorageControllers>
<StorageController name="IDE" type="PIIX4" PortCount="2" useHostIOCache="true" Bootable="true">
<AttachedDevice type="HardDisk" hotpluggable="false" port="0" device="0">
<Image uuid="{338b72a0-e28f-48b2-b258-bfae5a32b05c}"/>
</AttachedDevice>
<AttachedDevice passthrough="false" type="DVD" hotpluggable="false" port="1" device="0">
<Image uuid="{5077329b-a2f6-47cd-9b34-6af047c032cc}"/>
</AttachedDevice>
</StorageController>
<StorageController name="Floppy" type="I82078" PortCount="1" useHostIOCache="true" Bootable="true">
<AttachedDevice type="Floppy" hotpluggable="false" port="0" device="0"/>
</StorageController>
</StorageControllers>

The UUID in the "Image UUID" line is the "CD":
"Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional (5.00.2195.6717) (with SP4) [Italian] (OEM) (ISO)/ZRMPOEM_IT.ISO"

Please post a log from this VM:

Start the VM from full normal shutdown, not save-state. Log in to the desktop, open the "Risorsi del computer" folder, see if the CD drive is there. Then shut down the VM from within the VM's OS.

Right-click the VM in the main Virtualbox window's VM list, choose Show in Explorer/Finder/File Manager. In the "Logs" subfolder, zip the VM's "vbox.log", and post the zip file, using the forum's Attachments tab. (Configure your host OS to show all extensions so you can find the "vbox.log", not "vbox.log.1", etc.)

[Mario Rosso]

Here's the log file.

[scottgus1]

Thanks again. Here's what the log shows:

00:00:08.797903 [/Devices/piix3ide/0/LUN#2/Config/] (level 5)
00:00:08.797903 Format <string> = "RAW" (cb=4)
00:00:08.797904 Mountable <integer> = 0x0000000000000001 (1)
00:00:08.797904 Path <string> = "C:\Users\HP\Desktop\All Windows\Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional (with SP4) (OEM) [Italian] (ISO)\Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional (5.00.2195.6717) (with SP4) [Italian] (OEM) (ISO)\ZRMPOEM_IT.ISO" (cb=202)
00:00:08.797905 ReadOnly <integer> = 0x0000000000000001 (1)
00:00:08.797905 Type <string> = "DVD" (cb=4)

00:00:09.641384 PIIX3 ATA: LUN#2: CD/DVD, total number of sectors 190672, passthrough disabled

00:00:12.300153 VMMDev: Guest Log: BIOS: Booting from CD-ROM...

00:01:06.165971 /Public/Storage/PIIX3IDE0/Port2/BytesRead 194560 bytes

00:01:06.165932 /Public/Storage/PIIX3IDE0/Port0/BytesRead 33173504 bytes

LUN 2 and Port 2 are the VM's CD/DVD drive. The VM booted from the CD drive, probably ran the "Press any key to boot from CD..." then switched over to the hard drive on LUN/Port 0.

Why the CD drive is not appearing in the ME folder is a puzzle. You may have to websearch why this is happening in Windows forums.

So far there is nothing wrong in the VM's Virtualbox "hardware".

[Mario Rosso]

But nobody replies to me, because Windows ME is out of support for a lot of years...

[scottgus1]

That sounds like a problem. Of course, you only asked an hour and a half ago, so you have to give them time.

Meanwhile, try to make a fresh VM starting with a fresh install of Windows ME, not from upgrade. See if the CD drive shows up in the new VM.

[mpack]

ISTM the question must be mistaken on several points.

1. VirtualBox is a hardware simulator. If the hardware simulation of the optical drive was faulty then NO OS could use it, and we know that is not true, so in fact the report can't be accurate. If the OS was brand new and expecting some brand new drive feature then... maybe. But WinME? Not possible. We'd have seen it before.

2. Assignment of drive names (if any) is up to the guest OS. VirtualBox has no control over that. So the drive will be there, but the name is whatever the guest OS wants it to be. I.e. maybe not "D:".

3. Possibly if a drive had an unknown filesystem on it then the guest OS might not show it at all (but I think there'd be obvious error messages). But in this case the installer booted from the drive, so we know it can see the optical drive and does understand the filesystem there.

Just look around the Windows shell more carefully: the drive is there, if the drive still has the ISO in it.

[Mario Rosso]

As you said "a fresh install", the D: drive appears. This is strange... (This is a fresh install)

[scottgus1]

Good, so since a fresh install works, that means ME will normally recognize Virtualbox's CD drive correctly.

One test you could try is to switch the hard drive files in the VMs. Put the "Upgrade from 1.0 to 10.vdi" in the new VM's first IDE Master drive, and the new VM's .vdi on the old VM's first IDE Master drive. Then boot both VMs and see if the new VM booting from the old disk now does not show the CD drive but the old VM booting from the new disk does. If the missing CD drive problem follows the Upgrade .vdi to the new VM, then the problem is in the ME OS.

I no longer remember what settings window ME contained to change drive letters. But as Mpack says, it could be that the CD drive is actually in the "Upgrade from 1.0 to 10" ME OS but is just not being given a drive letter. From https://www.computing.net/answers/windo ... 70753.html see "Computing Staff" answer:

Open the Device Manager.
Click the plus sign next to CD-ROM or DVD/CD-ROM drives.
Double-click the drive whose letter you’d like to change.
Click the Settings tab.
Where the computer lists the Start and end drive letter, make your selection and then click OK.

Note that if there is a CD-ROM or DVD drive in the Device Manager, then the problem is in ME, not in Virtualbox.

[Mario Rosso]

Now detected (I think this is random)...

[mpack]

Computers don't (and can't) do "random". The process will be competely repeatable if understood and followed exactly.

The top post made no mention of this being an upgrade. Total guess: in some cases you might upgrade from a version of Windows that requires (or allows) a DOS level CD-ROM driver to a version of Windows that uses a native 32bit driver. In the transition you might temporarily lose access to the CD-ROM. One reboot and it would be fixed however. And completely repeatable if the update process is retraced.