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Geek Stuff : Tutorials : Ubuntu : (VirtualBox) PIIX3 cannot attach drive to the Secondary Master
April 30, 2008
I recently upgraded from Ubuntu 7.10 "Gutsy Gibbon" to the recently released Ubuntu 8.04 "Hardy Heron" and encountered numerous problems with programs and drivers. I'm posting the solutions to these problems as I find them.
I recently updated from Ubuntu 7.10 "Gutsy Gibbon" to Ubuntu 8.04 "Hardy Herron", and it whacked a bunch of my settings, programs and drivers. When I ran VitualBox and attempted to start my Windows 2000 Pro image it wouldn't open and I received the following error:
PIIX3 cannot attach drive to the Secondary Master.
VBox status code: -102 (VERR_FILE_NOT_FOUND).
After some searching on Google it turns out the CD/DVD-ROM drive is always the `Secondary Master' in VirtualBox. So to fix it we just need to highlight the virtual machine (Windows 2000 Pro in my case) in the left pane, then click on the CD/DVD-ROM in the right pane to access it's properties.
We need to make sure the Mount CD/DVD box is checked, then we need to choose the correct Host CD/DVD Drive for our system from the drop-down menu. After the upgrade mine had somehow reverted to `*/dev/cdrom', and neither of mine are mounted there. Maybe because I have more than one? Who knows..
The Host CD/DVD-ROM on my host computer is `HP CD-Writer+ 9000b (/dev/scd1)', so I selected it from the drop-down menu. I also checked the Enable Passthrough box, which allows the virtual machine to also write to the CD-ROM drive if needed. Then click the OK button to save the settings.
Now we should see the correct CD/DVD-ROM drive showing up for our virtual machine.
Then we should be able to click the Start button and the virtual machine should start up. It works again!
