I’ve been installing Exchange in a virtual machine this evening and ran into an interesting issue with Virtual Server and CD/DVD access. The virtual machine in question had a virtual CD/DVD drive was attached to the host computer’s CD-ROM drive but each time I switched CDs, the guest seemed unaware of the change.
I found a workaround on the microsoft.public.virtualserver newsgroup. It’s clumsy, but by releasing the guest’s virtual CD/DVD drive (connect to no media) and reconnecting to the host’s physical CD/DVD drive I was able to force the virtual machine to recognise the new disk (Virtual PC users can release and recapture the CD drive within Virtual PC).
I have the exact same issue with Virtual Server but this did not work for me.