Windows 7: Map network drive in Virtual XP Mode

I have a new DELL 8500 with Windows 7 Pro. I have downloaded and installed the XP Mode. I can open the virtual machine and do some things there, but am unable to get the networking straight. I've searched and read *many* threads in this and other forums on this site, but am unable to resolve my problem.

I have another computer running XP Pro. I can connect the Windows 7 and the XP Pro computer, share files, map remote drives, and just about anything I want to do. My problem comes when I try to do similar things with the virtual machine in XP mode. I've tried a number of settings and gotten only partial success by having both real computers in HOME mode, going to the settings page on the Virtual XP and setting up two adapter connections:
adapter 1: Shared Networking (NAT)
adapter 2: Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller.

When I open the virtual XP Mode window, I can *sometimes* drill down to looking at Workgroup in microsoft windows network in Entire network and see the virtual machine and my XP pro machine in the workgroup. At other times I get a message that says "the list of servers for this workgroup is not currently available". On at least one occasion, Workgroup displayed the virtual machine and my XP Pro machine. When that happened, I was able to do a "map network drive" and get the drives mounted into the virtual computer. Those mapped drives seem to get remembered, and I can open them and use them just as if they are part of the drive structure of the virtual computer.

What I have never been able to do is to get the virtual computer recognize that the primary Windows 7 computer belongs to Workgroup. My XP Pro computer does recognize the Windows 7 computer, and is able to map a network drive to it. When I look at the network on either the Windows 7 or the XP Pro computers, it does show me the virtual machine as VIRTUALXP -- but I cannot open its files from either computer.

All three computers are set to be HOME when setting up the network.

In short, my question is:
how do I get the virtual machine to recognize the other two computers in Workgroup, and then map network drives from them into the virtual environment.

I have a little more info, and a partial solution -- but it is still not working right. It turns out that all of the shared drives on my Windows 7 computer show up in the virtual machine in the category "other". I can do a "map network drive" and select them. They are not part of WORKGROUP in MS windows network, but are part of MS terminal services. For instance, my Windows 7 drive D: is listed as \\tsclient\D and I can use that to do the mapping in the virtual system.

I am still getting error messages at attempting to access WORKGROUP.

Do not set XP Mode to use two network adapters! It should only use one adapter, that of your host (in your case the Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller).

Follow these instructions to the letter to set up networking: Windows Virtual PC - Connect Virtual Machine to Network

Kari

Thanks, that helped. I'm not sure where I was told to enter multiple network connection adapters, nor why. But reseting it to only the single one (realteck etc) has made it better. I have renamed the workgroup on my Win 7 computer to MSHOME, and allowed both the XP Pro computer and the Virtual computer also to use their default of MSHOME.

Now when I look at the MS network, I see MSHOME listed and underneath that all three computers. The host (the Windows 7 computer) can now access files on the virtual machine. The virtual machine can now access files on my XP Pro machine. The virtual machine seems to be blocked from accessing files on the Windows 7 machine via the MSHOME group -- but can access them via the Microsoft Terminal services (e.g. \\tsclient\F is drive F on the host machine).


I don't know why the virtual machine cannot access the Host files through the MSHOME group, but as long as it can access them, I suppose I should be happy.

I'll mark this as solved -- and stop tinkering with it:-}}

Check if this post has some new ideas for you: XP Mode, sharing files on guest machine

Kari