Unable to mount the CD/DVD-ROM drive inside a virtual machine

Products

• VMware Desktop Hypervisor
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• You are unable to see a DVD/CD-ROM drive after mounting
• You are unable to install VMware Tools because the drive is not mountable
• Reinstalling the drivers for the DVD/CD-ROM on the virtual machine does not resolve the issue

Resolution

This issue occurs due to a Microsoft registry problem.

 

To resolve this issue, you must delete the UpperFilters and LowerFilters registry keys of the CD-ROM drive from the registry.

After applying a Windows update to a Windows Server 2008 Guest, the Guest OS lost several drivers and we were unable to reinstall VMware Tools until the UpperFilters registry key was deleted from:

HEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

 

Notes:

• This article contains steps to modify the registry. However, serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore, ensure to follow these steps carefully.
• For additional safety, back up the registry before modifying it.