virtualbox.org

Hello All,
I am new to the world of macs. My school issued my a macbook pro running on os x mountain lion. I have a copy of Empires: Dawn of the Modern World (a game produced by stainless steel studios in 2003) which I wanted to run on my mac. So, I downloaded virtual box and installed windows xp. Virtual Box set up fine, and the game downloaded from cd easily. However, now virtual box wont run the game. When I insert the game it begins to run and then quits instructing me to, "please insert correct disc then restart application." I am sure the disc is in the virtual cd drive, and I know it is not a faulty disc because I had a friend try to run the game on his pc and it worked flawlessly. How do I get my virtual machine to recognize the disc and run the game?

Please help,
sb23

It is sometimes more reliable to make an image of the CD, and mount that in the VM instead of the physical association. I believe the Mac has built in tools which will let you make a .dmg image of a data CD.

If by "an image of the cd" you mean copy the cd onto a folder and store it on my computer then I have already tried that. Unfortunately Stainless Steel Studios uses a copy protection program which prevents me from copying the information on the disk onto my computer. I guess they don't want people sharing the game with their friends

sb23 wrote:If by "an image of the cd" you mean copy the cd onto a folder and store it on my computer then I have already tried that.

No. He means using Disk Utility to make an image of the CD.

Make sure passthrough is enabled for the CD in the guest settings.

If the CD is copy protected then, as Perry says, the only solution would be to set the Passthrough option in the VM settings for the virtual CD drive.

Perryg and mpack,

If you guys aren't too busy to provide an explanation of how to make an image of a cd and how to enable passthrough I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks,
sb23

Image should not be necessary. Shut the guest down (not saved state) and go to the guests storage section in the settings. Click the cd and enable passthrough.

Imaging is not appropriate if the CD is copy protected. All media copy protection schemes that I know of rely on having deliberately bad sectors on the media: the software will expect to get certain errors when it accesses those sectors. If you copy the media, and assuming the copier doesn't simply error out when it hits the bad sectors, then the copy will have good sectors in those locations - and the software will refuse to run. So, imaging is out, as is copying the files off the CD. In the case of a VM, if the VM hides host media errors then again the software will not run. The only solution is a tighter connection between the host hardware and the VM, hence the Passthrough recommendation.

See Perry's instructions above for enabling Passthrough.

I am sorry. Like I stated before I am very new to the world of macs and pretty much a new comer to the world of computers for purposes other than word processing. Could you please provide instructions for enabling Passthrough as if you were giving them to a five year old? Please take your time in giving a response if my ignorance is becoming a nuisance.
Thanks, perryg !

I already told you how. read it and look at this screen shot. It is close to what you should see.

Is passthrough enabled from within the virtual machine? In your screen shot the title is "Windows 7 Settings." Since I am using Windows XP will i be going under my xp settings form within my virtual machine?

No you use the VirtualBox main manager. The same place where you created the guest and where you start it as well.
You can't miss the settings icon. It is at the top left.

Ok, I found that and enabled passthrough and when I attempt the run the game I no longer get the error message. However, the game only makes it a through a few more seconds before something else happens. When I select the game, the system begins to run and displays a black screen showing the title of the game (this is usually where the error message occurred). Then, a new screen shows up but promptly disappears without an error message of any kind. After this new screen disappears I no longer hear the disk turning inside the computer. It sounds as if nothing is happening inside the computer at all.
Again, because I had a friend try the disk on his computer and it worked, I have no reason to suspect that it is a faulty disk. When the game was produced I believe XP was the current operating system so I don't see why the game wouldn't work on XP.
Let me know if I'm not explaining this well enough.
Thanks for hanging in with me so far,
sb23

Post the guests log file (as an attachment)
See Online Users Manual for the location of the file.