Hi everyone,

I would like to ask if anyone could please help me set up my network connections so that I can access the internet from a virtual machine using virtualbox VirtualBox (http://www.virtualbox.org). I am running Windows XP media center SP2 on both the host and the virtual machine. I have Zone Alarm and AVG Free installed on both the host and VM. I am on a standard dial up 56K internet connection. I think I must connect using a shared connection.

With the host machine connecting to the net, if I try to open internet explorer to surf the web from the VM, it just says "cannot find server or DNS error ". I must have something configured wrong either in the host or the VM, although I thought that virtualbox was supposed to set up the connections automatically.

I would appreciate any advice you can offer.

Thanks for your help.
John

If the host machine machine's firewall/virus settings are not preventing it from accessing the internet then the guest will have no problems accessing the net either as long as the Guest OS configuration is setup for NAT. Check to make sure that the GUEST's networking is setup for NAT. If not then let me know what it is and we'll go from there.

Hi Cajalat,

Thanks for your reply.

I think that zone alarm should be allowing the guest OS to access the internet. The ZA box popped up and said that virtualbox was acting as a server, and I allowed it. Any time virtualbox wanted access, I told ZA to allow it.

I think the guest OS is set up for NAT. I found the following information under "network" in virtualbox for the guest OS...

Adapter 0

Enable neetwork adapter (plug it into the corresponding slot) is checked.

Attahced to NAT

Cable connected

On the host machine, in the lower left hand corner the LAN icon says that a network connection cable is unplugged and it has a red "X" over it.

Thanks again,
John

If you have a red x that means the NIC is disabled. Have you tried to enable it? i.e. right-click on it and enable it.

Hi Cajalat,

If I click on the icons it opens a network connections dialog box. My regular dial up connection icon is listed there, and underneath that, there is a connection icon that says "1394 connection, connected, 1394 adapter". Underneath the 1394 adapter icon, there is an icon for local area connection. The local area connection icon says "network cable unplugged, Nvidia nforce networking controller". If I right click on the local area connection icon, there is an option to disable, so I am assuming that it is enabled. If I click on properties, and then click on "configure" for the nvidia network conroller, it says that the device is enabled and working properly.

After clicking configure, if I click under "advanced" for the network adapter I get the following information...

Flow control = enabled
lEEE802.IP support = disable
Low power state link speed = disable
Network address = Not present
Optimize for = CPU
Speed duplex settings = full autonegotiation
Vlan ID = 1
VLAN support = disable
Wake on magnetic packet = enable
wake on pattern = enable
wakeonlan from power off = enable

Sometimes sleeping and waking up refreshed helps. I reread your question and I think I see the problem better. Your host machine is connected to the internet via dialup NOT ethernet. Your guest is connected to the internet with the assumption that you're using the Ethernet card since that's what you installed. However, your host OS's ethernet card is in fact not connected since it is using the dialup and not the ethernet. So your guest basically inherits the same behavior from your host and it too will show a disconnected cable.

I don't know if sharing a dialup connection from a guest OS is possible with Virtualbox. You may need to install a dialup adaptor for your guest machine.

Another thing you might want to try is getting an ethernet loopback connector which you can plug in the RJ45 port on your machine. This will trick the machine into getting a link and therefore an IP address, albeit a reserved IP (168.254.x.x). At this point the guest OS should have a link and connectivity but of course can't get anywhere.

What you can do at this point is configure ICS (Internet Connection Sharing) on your dial-up and in theory your Guest OS should be able to have connectivity.

Casey