Error mounting ISO file - "Sorry, there was a problem mounting the file"

Recently, I've had problems using the built in functionality of Windows Explorer to mount ISO files as a virtual DVD drive.  When I tried to mount an iso, there was a long delay with the 'wait' cursor, and eventually I got an error dialog which said simply "Sorry, there was a problem mounting the file."  Subsequent attempts to mount an iso file (whether the same file or a different file) would immediately return the error, without delay.  

I searched far and wide online and could not find a solution that applied in my environment.  Eventually, I tried mounting the iso using the "Mount-DiskImage" powershell command in hopes of getting a more informative error message.  The error I got was:

Mount-DiskImage : A virtual disk support provider for the specified file was not found. 

Searching for that error message lead me to posts about problems installing a device driver.  Then, everything clicked...

Some time ago, we implemented some Device Installation Restriction group policy settings.  By default, installation of any new devices on a computer is blocked, unless it is explicitly listed in the policy as an allowed device.  Since the  Microsoft virtual DVD Rom device wasn't explicitly allowed, it was being blocked by policy.  Normally, when a device fails to install because of this policy windows pops up a toast notification with that info, but it does not in this case.

Adding the device "scsi\cdrommsft____virtual_dvd-rom_" to the list of allowed device ID's resolved this issue and allowed me to successfully mount an iso.  

The moral of the story, if you're using group policy or any software which restricts the installation of devices, this could be causing the failure mounting iso files.  Disable that policy or software temporarily to test, and if that fixes the issue, add the above device ID to your allowed list.  

Hope that helps someone else find the issue a little bit faster than I did!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mystery Solved: Bitlocker is enabled, but Intune shows the computer as non-compliant for Require Bitlocker

For some time, I have struggled to understand why Intune reports some computers as non-compliant with the "Require Bitlocker" setting, even though Bitlocker is enabled and working on the computer.  In my searches for an explanation, I found the same question asked by many others, but never an answer.  Until today. I accidentally stumbled across this article from Microsoft's Rob Lane , which explains how the Require Bitlocker setting is evaluated and why it might seem to incorrectly report a non-compliant state.  I encourage you to check out that article for full details.  I'll just summarize here the part that suddenly made this bitlocker compliance issue make sense to me. The "Require Bitlocker" setting in Intune relies on the Device Health Attestation (DHA) service in Windows 10 to report the state of Bitlocker encryption on the computer.  If Bitlocker protection is disabled or suspended, DHA will report that the computer is non-compliant with this
Read more

Windows 10 Credential Guard breaks WiFi

Recently, I ran into an issue with computers running windows 10 that would not connect to our WPA2-Enterprise encrypted wifi network.  When it failed to connect, there was no indication of why, only the message "Can't connect to this network."  The computers were able to connect to unencrypted networks and networks using a Pre-shared key for WPA encryption without issue. Checking the event logs on the RADIUS server to see why the comptuer failed to connect, there was no log entry for a connection attempt from the affected system.  The WLAN-Auto-Config log on the client listed a couple of errors, including Event ID 11006 and 12013, but other than showing that the failure reason was "Explicit EAP failure received", they didn't give much to go on: Log Name:      Microsoft-Windows-WLAN-AutoConfig/Operational Source:        Microsoft-Windows-WLAN-AutoConfig Date:          8/15/2016 1:11:20 PM Event ID:      11006 Task Category: MsmSecurity Level:         Err
Read more

Data Sharing Service crashes on Windows Server 2016 - Event ID 7023

Image
While troubleshooting an issue recently on a Windows Server 2016 system, I noticed errors on the System event log about the Data Sharing Service crashing. The Data Sharing Service service terminated with the following error: %%3239247874 Searching online for more information about this service and why it might be failing, I came across a lot of people describing similar problems, but the only explanation and solution I found came from this December  blog post by Microsoft Japan .    Google translate did a great job making the post understandable to me, but since the information doesn't seem to have been widely publicized I thought I'd share it here to help get the word out. The Data Sharing Service fails due to a resource conflict with another service included in Server 2016, the User Access Logging Service.  Either one of these services alone will run without issue, but if one is already running and you try to start the other, it will fail. According to an update
Read more