I've been using vmware fusion on my macbook pro for months and i love it!!!! but i was wondering if there was a way to connect my external firewire dvd burner to the laptop and have it recognized in windows xp withing vmware fusion. I have tried to simple plug and play but only the mac osx portion recognizes it. If this isn't possible, then has anyone tried this with Parallels?
You can't connect a firewire device directly to the VM but you can add it as a drive and use it. See: http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-7730 I have had issues with USB devices too though they are recognized. The trick to those was that only one OS will control it at a time. Make sure VMWare Fusion is active if you want to use a USB device, or if you want to use it in OS X make sure that is what is active when you plug in the device.