Cannot Share Host Drive while Using XP Virtual Machine in Win 7

[Bronco Leonard]

I have an old program that will run on XP but not Win 7 Pro and I am using Windows Virtual PC on my laptop to run it. It works fine but I cannot access files (share drives) from the main hard drive, i.e., the Win 7 file structure. I can work with the VM XP file structure but not the main files. I am able to access flash drives from the VM and so I can move the files around this way but it is very cumbersome. This machine is not on any sort of network. I have done the same thing on my desktop and have exactly the same problem (it operates on Win 7 Pro as well). Security is not a concern; I am the only user of these machines.

I have read what I can find about this and tried resetting all kinds of "sharing" permissions, including sharing just a folder instead of the entire drive, enabling sharing from both the Win 7 side and the VM XP side, etc. I've tried everything I can but to no avail.

Can anyone offer some ideas and/or direct me to a thorough discussion of this issue? Thanks in advance.

 

[Ztruker]

Read here, see if it helps: Share host drives with a virtual machine

 

[edwar]

Although it has been a while since I used the MS VM XP Pro system, XP Mode, (I use Oracle Virtualbox), make sure the VM is set to Bridge network adapter. Otherwise it would be set to NAT which puts the XP VM on a separate network IP. Then you have to actually share that drive or folder on Win 7 and you can't use, IMHO the very Stupid, Win 7 Homegroup system. you have to setup a Workgroup and have both Win 7 and the XP VM in that workgroup. Also you need to have a password on both Win 7 and XP Admin accounts so you can authenticate the connection between them for access.

You may also have to adjust your firewall setting. Not sure as I don't use any of that type of software.