Booting from a USB stick in VMware Player
It isn't possible to boot from a USB stick under VMware player 3.0.0, because its BIOS is ignorant of USB, but fortunately there is an easy workaround:
- Download the PLoP boot manager (e.g. plpbt-5.0.10.zip), which supports usb booting
- Decide whether you want to install PLoP to the virtual hard disk (useful if you will boot from the USB stick more often) or not
- Using PLoP without installing it to the virtual disk:
- Extract the ISO image plpbt-5.0.10/plpbt.iso from the archive
- Attach the extraced ISO image to you VMware virtual machine as a CD/DVD
- Boot the vmware machine from this virtual CD. (VMware should automatically try it as a boot device, if not, press Esc at the virtual machine start to enter the boot device selection menu).
- PLoP will be started, ses below.
- Installing PLoP to the virtual disk (you may want to check the PLoP installation guide):
- Extract the ISO image plpbt-5.0.10/install/plpbtin.iso from the archive
- Attach the extraced ISO image to you VMware virtual machine as a CD/DVD
- Boot the vmware machine from this virtual CD. (VMware should automatically try it as a boot device, if not, press Esc at the virtual machine start to enter the boot device selection menu).
- PLoP installation menu will show up, press 1 to select the option "Full boot manager install" and answer "y" to the question whether you want to proceed
- When the installation finishes, power off the virtual machine
- Remove the CD/DVD device from the virtual machine, we won't need it anymore
- Start the virtual machine, which will boot PLoP from the virtual hard disk.
- Using PLoP without installing it to the virtual disk:
- Once PLoP is started, it will give you a selection of devices to boot from including your USB stick. (Make sure that the USB stick is connected to the virtual machine, if not, connect it and restart the machine via the menu VM - Power - Reset).