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I'm trying to play the Sims on my virtual machine. I run a Macbook Pro i5 with Mavericks installed. My virtual system is Snow Leopard 10.6.3. The system requirements for The Sims are all met inside of my virtual machine. I do have the Sims Complete Collection CD, but can't get it to show up in the virtual environment. I thought maybe converting the Sims CD to an .iso and loading it would work but I just got a binary file error when I tried to open it up.

If I'm correct - you need to use to use Shared Folders through Guest Additions to attach your virtual environment to the hosts CD/DVD Drive. However when I do this I get this error "The VirtualBox Guest Additions do not appear to be available on this virtual machine and shared folders cannot be used without them. To use shared folders inside the virtual machine, please install the Guest Additions if they are not installed, or re-install them if they are not working corrrectly, by selecting Insert Guest Additions CD Image from the Devices menu. If they are installed but the machine is not yet fully started then shared folders will be available once it is."

However, when I follow those instructions (Clicking on Insert Guest Additions CD Image from the devices menu) I get another error "Unable to insert the virtual optical disk /Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VBoxGuestAdditions.iso into the machine Leopard. Would you like to try to force insertion of this disk? Could not mount the media/drive '/Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VBoxGuestAditions.iso' (VERR_PDM_MEDIA_LOCKED). The details go on to say "Result Code: NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005).

Any help on getting Guest Additions installed correctly, so I can run discs from my host computers CD/DVD drive inside of the virtual environment or just how I can get the Sims installed into my virtual machine would be greatly appreciated!! Thank you so much!

That's correct - there are no Guest Additions for OS X guests, so GA shared folders can't work - though true network shares should. Graphics performance will also be poor.

So there's no possible way to run the Sims in my virtual environment I'm assuming? If there's any possible work around I'd love to hear it.

I don't know anything about "Sims".

The easiest way to get a CD/DVD to show up in a virtual environment is to make an ISO image of it and mount the ISO in the VM. You can also access host drives, and that may be necessary if the CD is copy protected.

However, as I said, graphics performance may be poor in an OS X guest, due to the lack of GAs. Whether that's important for "Sims" I don't know.

How do I access host drives?

The same way you access ISOs, it's a different selection on the same dialog (Storage settings - details in user manual).

Warning: USB CD drives will probably not work. For some reason they are not identified as CD drives - that may be a Mac thing. If you don't get offered any host drives then you have this problem. In that case your only option on that host is an ISO image, and you must hope that the CD isn't copy protected.

Will you just ship me an old mac? I'll pay shipping