[Macpilot]

So I bought this friggin' VPC thing to run, you guessed it, PC apps, and now it appears that the app that I most need will not even work.

There are two CDs. One is recognized when I insert it into the Powerbook. The other, spins around for a bit, then is ejected from the Powerbook.

I tried re-installing VPC and all that, and no dice.

Placed the offending CD into a real PC, and it appeared.

I don't even know if it is a CD or a DVD.

This is really getting aggravating.

It appears I must get my boss to give me a real PC to get any work done.

Does anybody else see this phenomena with certain disks and VPC?

[Maflynn]

Originally posted by Macpilot:
So I bought this friggin' VPC thing to run, you guessed it, PC apps, and now it appears that the app that I most need will not even work.

There are two CDs. One is recognized when I insert it into the Powerbook. The other, spins around for a bit, then is ejected from the Powerbook.

I tried re-installing VPC and all that, and no dice.

Placed the offending CD into a real PC, and it appeared.

I don't even know if it is a CD or a DVD.

This is really getting aggravating.

It appears I must get my boss to give me a real PC to get any work done.

Does anybody else see this phenomena with certain disks and VPC?

What's the application?
It may say if its a dvd on the hub of the disc. I haven't heard of a standard cd not working in vpc, so it may be some sort of copy-protected cd or dvd format that's not compatible with the mac.
FWIW, I ran into some incompatabilities with programs not running in VPC, my favorite text editor on the PC (ultraedit) does not work at all in vpc, strange, its only a text editor.

Good luck

[Sven G]

VPC can read DVDs without any problems (version 7 even captures DVD .iso images, which version 6 didn't: it was limited to CD-sized images). Maybe it's a problem on the OS X side: try inserting the CD/DVD without Virtual PC open, and see what happens. You could also try to make an image of the CD/DVD with Disk Utility (new image from device, etc., and then DVD/CD master) and capture that in VPC, and see what happens. Or it could also, maybe, be some form of "enhanced" DVD/CD, with some (undocumented) incompatibility with VPC...?

One must experiment a little, sometimes...

[Macpilot]

The CD (or DVD) in question is a aviation chart database software disk. Two disks are part of the deal, one loads the Data Loader software on Windows, and this one works.

The other is a disk full of chart data and the Viewer program. This disk is updated every two weeks as part of a subscription service. I insert it into the Mac, it spins a bit, the drive makes some noises, the Finder shows nothing, and then the Mac ejects the disk by itself, without me hitting the eject key.

The software documentation does not say anything about the disks being DVDs, just CDs.

I am wondering if it is a OS X thing or a Powerbook thing.

I am just really disappointed in VPC at this point.

[SpaceRockness]

I've been a VPC user since 2.x(still using VPC 6.1 at the moment) and whenever this happened an odd solution is to use a USB CDRW drive which is Win9x supported for reading problematic or most recently 'windows only' copy protected discs... in the VPC USB menu set the drive to be used only by VPC. While you may not own a USB burner, borrow one from a friend to see if that'll work. If it does work, create an iso(s) of the discs in question using a Windows software(Adaptec/Roxio CD Creator) and then copy it back to your OS X desktop, lock the file(though file info so Toast will mount it as a non-writable CD)... then whenever you need the disc(s) have Toast mount it.

Since I never used that software, I don't know if I've wasted my time typing that but that excessively long solution worked on a few older applications of mine that were picky during an install with multiple discs. The external USB drive I used is a old Iomega 4x4x6x cdrw. Also a random fact is you can actually burn discs in VPC with a USB drive too!

[Macpilot]

Originally posted by SpaceRockness:
I've been a VPC user since 2.x(still using VPC 6.1 at the moment) and whenever this happened an odd solution is to use a USB CDRW drive which is Win9x supported for reading problematic or most recently 'windows only' copy protected discs... in the VPC USB menu set the drive to be used only by VPC. While you may not own a USB burner, borrow one from a friend to see if that'll work. If it does work, create an iso(s) of the discs in question using a Windows software(Adaptec/Roxio CD Creator) and then copy it back to your OS X desktop, lock the file(though file info so Toast will mount it as a non-writable CD)... then whenever you need the disc(s) have Toast mount it.

Since I never used that software, I don't know if I've wasted my time typing that but that excessively long solution worked on a few older applications of mine that were picky during an install with multiple discs. The external USB drive I used is a old Iomega 4x4x6x cdrw. Also a random fact is you can actually burn discs in VPC with a USB drive too!

Thank you for the detailed info. But it appears that since these disks are issued every two weeks as part of a subscription service, I don't think I will want to go through all this. I am going to have access to a PC laptop and I am just going to do that. I just discovered another thing that does not work with Virtual PC, and that is using COM ports. I could not get the Keyspan serial-USB adapter to use a COM 1 or 2 port, it only gives me a COM 3 port, and of course, the software I am using won't allow a COM 3 port to transfer the data.

So now it appears that I almost completely wasted my money on VPC.

Bummer