Virtual PC Networking Help

ringo747 · 12 Nov 2008 at 11:48

Hi,

I have recently upgraded my laptop to vista. The following worked fine on xp but doesnt work anymore.

I have a number of Virtual machines which I run on my vista host machine. I connect to the internet using a 3 mobile broadband dongle and then to my company network using vpn. How can I share this network connection to my virtual machines using NAT?

I can ping one of the work boxes from my vista host but i cannot do this or locate any shared folders from the guest operating system. Nothing has changed on the virtual machine itself.

Vista must be blocking the NAT connections which I am trying to use. My VPC settings enable NAT (Shared networking)

This is really driving me insane as I need it urgently to get some work done.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks

Skidilliplop · 12 Nov 2008 at 12:07

Depends what software but in Virtualbox or Vmware you'd create a virtual network adapter for each and set up NAT based networking in the VM setup. Then you have to connect them all to the USB dongle somehow. I doubt you can bridge it.

Probably the easiest way is to set up ICS on the host OS and use internal networking if the VM software supports it. This allows the VMs to connect to a virtual network within the host PC and *should* allow them to connect to the internet via ICS provided you configure the vNICs that way.

ringo747 · 12 Nov 2008 at 12:10

I am using virtual pc 2007. It really is weird as it worked exactly the same way in XP. All that has changed is that I am using vista.

I have set the virtual machine preferences to use NAT but something in vista must be blocking the connections to the host.

Skidilliplop · 12 Nov 2008 at 13:43

Wouldn't suprise me in the slightest. If i were you i would check out the vendor forums and see what's on there.
I know it's way too late now but vista would be the last OS i'd pick as host. For Virtualisation XP and Linux are much easier to get running.

ringo747 · 12 Nov 2008 at 14:36

Thanks - Il maybe go back to XP. In the meantime i'll just have to recreate all my projects in the host machine and connect to my VSS server from there.

Skidilliplop · 12 Nov 2008 at 14:39

Just a thought, can you not install the 3G dongle in the XP virtual machine? you should be able to pass through USB devices to VMs.

ringo747 · 12 Nov 2008 at 14:42

The problem is that I use the 3g modem and also a vpn connection to my work network. The vpn card will only work when it is used on a 'mycompanyname' tailored build of vista. I really need the vpn connection to be initiated on the host and then shared to the vm if you see what I mean.

Skidilliplop · 12 Nov 2008 at 14:59

That's a bum. If you only need the one VM you could try bridging the virtual NIC and physical NIC on the host then run ICS. Provided they both have IPs on the same subnet that should work.
However ICS on vista may or may not be a barrel of laughs

ringo747 · 12 Nov 2008 at 15:02

Im not too up on the networky stuff really so im a bit lost with that. Do I have to create a virtual NIC first? Is that the nic for the virtual machine? Sorry im not too sharp on this.

Skidilliplop · 12 Nov 2008 at 15:07

yeah the virtual machine should have a nic that shows up in the network connections panel in the host OS. if you configure both with addresses etc then add them to a network bridge then they should be able to talk as if both were in the same hub. That way if ICS is configured on Vista then as far as it is aware it's recieving inbound connections from the LAN into it's NIC to be forwarded to the net via NAT. I've not done bridging in vista before so I have no idea how many VMs you can do this for but certainly would work for one.

ringo747 · 12 Nov 2008 at 15:13

I dont see any virtual nic in network connections. Is that a vmware thing only I wonder?

Skidilliplop · 12 Nov 2008 at 15:25

Nope, Virtualbox does it also. You could try using Vmware instead. It can use live partitions on disks in VMs so should be of use to you. worth a pop

ringo747 · 12 Nov 2008 at 15:52

It really is strange.I am trying to just share the 3 mobile broadband connection using NAT and the vm still doesn't pick it up. Really havent a clue to be honest!

ns400r · 12 Nov 2008 at 17:16

The host machine should have a 'Virtual Machine Network Service' associated with the network card in Network Properties.

ringo747 · 12 Nov 2008 at 19:17

ns400r said:
The host machine should have a 'Virtual Machine Network Service' associated with the network card in Network Properties.

Will this setting be linked to each connection i.e. in the LAN, wireless connection, mobile broadband connection etc?

Or is this one option that has to just be enabled?

ns400r · 12 Nov 2008 at 19:26

ringo747 said:
Will this setting be linked to each connection i.e. in the LAN, wireless connection, mobile broadband connection etc?

Or is this one option that has to just be enabled?

I only have 1 active connection so I don't know what it does when there are multiples.

ringo747 · 13 Nov 2008 at 09:11

I have tried this today on a LAN connection in my work and this works spot on. It must be something to do with using usb modem along with vpn. XP seemed to share my vpn connection details but i cannot get this to work at all on vista.