A required CD/DVD drive device driver is missing. If you have a driver floppy disk, CD, DVD, or USB flash drive, please insert it now.
Note: If the Windows installation media is in the CD/DVD drive, you can safely remove it for this step.
There are a number of solutions and theories out their and the majority don't work for most people, However, because there are multiple solutions some dumb people look for the simplest solution and the problem here is this.. out of the multiple solutions only two are going to work for you on that specific machine you are using!
The first solution that works for everyone is to install any form of windows XP, once that's installed run the windows 7 setup from within xp, select Full Install (not upgrade) Then when asked what type of install, its the second option for a Full Install..
At this point it'll get to a stage were it actually shows you the hard disk or the virtual hard disk... DO NOT CLICK DRIVE OPTIONS and play with it.. Just highlight the drive and click next.. And their you have it.. Windows 7 will install...
The second solution is one that works for those with external DVD drives is this... After getting the message, simply go backwards to the box with the install button and then unplug the drive from a USB3 port and plug it into a USB2 port.
Don't have a USB 2 port?, I guess you could always try a cheep and nasty USB hub that gives you access to 4 USB ports.. the cheep ones are often USB 2, consider it like an adapter rather than just a hub.. handy piece of kit today huh.. yet pile of crap back in the day.. Could maybe also use a USB 1.1 extension lead too if you have no hub.
The tricky Third solution and tbh its far from a recommendation here Is to go into your Bios and set your hard disk controllers to IDE, the problem here is sometimes a board will then disable access to your Second Sata drive (if you have one) Also some boards don't have this option. Whether it be IDE-SATA or IDE-RAID or SATA-RAID, people still appear to face problems.
The Install 7 from within xp appears the simplest method for virtual issues.
RANDOM TESTING NOTES:
These are some ideas i had while facing this problem of Installing windows 7 on a Windows XP computer with Virtual PC 2007 and some of the ideas i tried. That'll give you an idea that i do know what I'm doing most of the time and these notes may answer some questions your considering as possible solutions. So here are some other tricks i tried.
I setup a virtual drive and unticked hardware virtualization, This way it would be a universal virtual driver set always in use Rather than anything related from My Own Board being added to either OS used.
I Installed an XP, I then ran Win7 from within XP, selected full install, selected the drive and installed 7.
I then ran a program from within the running Windows 7 to back up ALL the drivers. Smart idea huh..
Then i made an ISO file with just these drivers, then I created a new virtual machine, disabled hardware virtualization, selected the the option to Capture ISO, selected my win7 and began to install the win7 from fresh.
When i got the no CD/DVD error, i told virtual PC to capture the Drivers.iso i made and browsed to the ISO with the option on the windows 7 install box and selected my drivers iso.
It took a while (slow pc) but it listed all the drivers, i selected all hit next, took ages and failed on the Trio video driver. So i de-selected the trio tried the rest, It then took ages testing all the others again and at the end told me none were compatible. I also tried them individually.
This to me makes no sense at all, while installing XP first will work for everyone, i am at a loss as to why when 7 is cleaned up & drivers backed up.. why they won't work...
I can only think it is a Text Mode Driver issue and the drivers backed up are not text mode drivers, but the intricate differences isn't my field at all.
I also tried a number of textmode drivers designed for slipstreaming into Windows 7 and also Vista and none of those even appear when i tick "hide drivers that are not compatible" Nor did any of the usual XP text mode drivers.
Rather random the ones i backed up actually list but none are what its looking for... I suppose their could be text mode versions of those it lists, but i doubt they would be hook'able by Virtual PC's own kinda Bios.
The only solid solution as of the date of this post (October 2019) Is to install Win7 from within XP, and a full install, not upgrade with NO modifications to the partition XP made when you select the drive within 7's setup.
