Monday, June 27, 2005

Virtual PC & CD/DVD Issues: RTFM

I spent a couple hours this morning trying to figure out why Virtual PC wouldn't recognize my Win2K CD I'd created from an MSDN ISO image. I couldn't get the d@mned thing to boot off the CD, even though the host system would recognize the disc and boot just ducky. I've used VMWare for several years and never had any similar troubles. Finally, I right-clicked on the image of the CDROM in the VPC's left tray. Lo and behold, a context menu with "Capture ISO Image" appears. Duh. A simple browse to the image file on the host system's hard drive and POOF! I'm off and running. A quick search of the VPC help file said as much. Scott Hanselman had a good post on the importance of starting out with fundamentals when troubleshooting an issue. His team lost half a morning for ten folks. I just lost a couple hours, but it was a good kick in the pants reminder to what I'd learned the hard way from some very tough sergeants when working on radar systems while flying on E-3s years ago: RTFM and KISS. Start with the basics, check the manuals. Usually not said in such a mild manner, though.

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