A Windows ISO times out at "Press any key to boot from CD" in VMware Fusion

Symptoms

A new machine started with vmrun start shows "Time out", then "EFI VMware Virtual SATA CDROM Drive (1.0)... No Media" and "EFI Network...". The log says Status upon boot failure: Time out.

Cause

The ISO's boot loader waits a few seconds for a key. Nobody pressed one (observed). A second CD drive with a data-only ISO, such as an answer file, then shows "No Media", as it has no boot loader.

What to do

Press a key in the machine's window when the prompt shows. From a script, send the key with vmcli, giving the USB HID code in decimal: space is 44.

vmcli VMX MKS sendKeyEvent 44 0

• The hex form 0x2c changed nothing (observed).
• Keys sent in the first seconds reach the firmware instead and open its Boot Manager (observed). From there, the down arrow (81), down again and Enter (40) chose "SATA CDROM Drive (0.0)", and space then answered the prompt.
• vmcli VMX MKS captureScreenshot FILE.png shows which screen is up before each key.