Connecting Virtual Devices

On the Devices tab, you can view a list of all removable devices (such as floppy and CD-ROM drives) available to the virtual machine:

•	IDE – The CD-ROM drive, or ISO image if you have the device configured to use an ISO image

•	Floppy – The floppy drive

•	Ethernet – The network adapter

•	sound – The sound adapter

If the check box next to a device is selected (checked), the device is connected and the virtual machine can access that particular device. You can also connect or disconnect any of the listed devices by selecting or clearing the check boxes.

Note: The controls for connecting and disconnecting devices might not be available, depending on whether your system administrator has enabled them.

Note: On rare occasions, you might not see a particular network adapter listed that you know should appear in the list. If this happens, edit the virtual machine settings to remove all Ethernet adapters from the list and then add them back again.

After you connect or disconnect a device, to verify the change, close and reopen the VMware Tools control panel and select the Devices tab. The devices’ check boxes should match your selections.

You can also connect or disconnect a device by right-clicking the device icon in the status bar of the virtual machine window. For more information about connecting devices, see the documentation for your VMware product.

Sharing Devices Between the Host and Guest Operating Systems

Some devices cannot be shared between the host operating system and the guest operating system, or between two guest operating systems running in two different virtual machines.

For example, the virtual machine cannot access the floppy drive at the same time as another running virtual machine or the host operating system. If you encounter an error while trying to connect the floppy drive to the virtual machine, make sure that the device is not mounted by the host operating system and that it is not connected to any other virtual machine running on the host.