virtualbox.org

I searched for a solution and didn't find it, but I bet it's around here somewhere. Just in case some other rookie has the problem, I thought I'd post it.

Once I installed WinXP as a guest on my Ubuntu 10.10 machine, I tried to install some software via the cdrom but it locked up WinXP every time. After researching, I tried clicking the passthrough box, but that didn't help. I tried removing and reinstalling the cdrom, also to no avail. I eventually read something about installing Intel SATA drivers. I tried that, but it said I needed to install Microsoft .NET Framework. I proceeded to download .NET Framework 4 and install it in order to get ready for the SATA driver. On a whim, I tried accessing the cdrom before installing the SATA driver and it worked. It seems I needed .NET Framework to access the cdrom in the WinXP virtual machine. I've only been fooling with it a few hours, so I don't have a clue why it fixed it, but it did.

A glitch with one CD?

VirtualBox Windows guests do NOT need .NET in order to access CD drives. It's possible however that the installer program on that CD does need it.

And of course: there was never any chance that this was a VirtualBox problem. VBox doesn't even require the guest to be Windows, never mind Windows + .NET. All VirtualBox does is provide the hardware, it would be up to the guests to access the hardware properly using whatever software it wants.