VirtualBox beginner's problem

[BarkingGhostar]

OK, I admit to only haven tried this on two Hackintosh computers, but I reach the same problem right from the start. In each instance I am trying to build a W7 VM. The W7 installation DVD is in the optical drive and accessible from OS X Mavericks.

When I begin to create a new VM, under storage it automatically creates one IDE controller and one SATA controller. Under the IDE controller it has CD/DVD-ROM drive as an attachment and under the SATA controller the VHD I configured during the VM creation.

The actual physical optical drive is SATA and when I try to add it, as such, to the SATA controller, it expects me to a) insert a virtual disk into the virtual drive, b) leave the virtual optical drive empty, or c) choose a physical optical drive (which finds none).

Without being able to find a physical optical drive in the VM I cannot access the W7 DVD that OS X readily sees and can access. What is this newbie doing wrong?

BTW, I ran into the exact same situation under LinuxMint 15. As such, I think there is something I am doing (or not doing) wrong.

 

[Tyranicus]

It's emulating a CD drive. It doesn't actually matter what interface the physical drive is. An emulated IDE drive will still work.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

OK, then my perceived problem is of a different nature. The VM cannot see any bootable media. OS X sees the disk, its contents, etc., but the VM cannot. Not sure what to look at to resolve.

 

[Tyranicus]

Go to the Devices menu at the top of the screen, and select CD/DVD devices. From there, you can select what you want the emulated drive to use, either a physical drive or an ISO image.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

OK, I reinstalled Linux Mint to 16 and downloaded VB 4.3.0 (it now reports 4.3.6 available) and guess what? Now it sees the optical drive. I did exactly the same thing as previously attempted but now it is working. Maybe a LM15 issue?

I'll have to retry this in OS X.