Can't access host from guest and vice-versa

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Alchad
Posts: 4
Joined: 30. Dec 2022, 20:30

Can't access host from guest and vice-versa

Post by Alchad »

Hi, newbie on this forum but very much an oldie in age, so please cut me a little slack.

By way of introduction/explanation, I have a silly affection for a piece of ancient hi-fi kit called a Cambridge Azur 640H music server which basically is a mini-itx based PC with some specialized (Windows CE based!) software and high end DAC. Unfortunately it was a bit ahead of it's time and suffered with various problems, particularly networking with PC's.

Despite that it was a very well engineered piece of hi-fi and over the years I have bought a few on Ebay which needed fixing up and haven even setup a Facebook Group to help other like minded enthusiasts of the 640H.

As I said the 640H was tricky to network with PC's and as Windows kept updating it's operating system it became almost impossible - XP was the last version with which I could interchange music and back up my music collection. I found a rather clunky workaround which involved using an old win7 laptop running Windows Virtual PC which could network to the 640H and I could in turn network to the laptop from my win 11 Desktop - as I said, very klunky!!

Moving on I then came across Virtualbox and managed to (eventually) get it up and running on my Win 11 desktop and have installed XPmode as guest. Via this I can access the 640H and using shared folders transfer music between the two. HOWEVER, there are two thing which are annoying me and about which I would appreciate advice.

Firstly when I access "Network" on my Desktop PC I can see "Desktop", Sonylaptop" and VirtualPC. I can drill down and access the Sonylaptop (and obviously the Desktop) but not the Virtual PC - get the error message "Windows cannot access Virtual PC. Similarly with XP running on Virtualbox I can also access both the laptop and the 640H, but again not the Desktop.

I am running a Bridged Adapter in VirtualBox which according to this I found on Google

This network mode can be used to run servers on VMs that must be fully accessible from a physical local area network. When using the bridged network mode in VirtualBox, you can access a host machine, hosts of the physical network and external networks, including internet from a VM. The VM can be accessed from the host machine and from other hosts (and VMs) connected to the physical network

Sadly, this does not seem to be the case. Any advice on how to sort would be appreciated.

The second problem is minor in comparison but similarly annoying. In the XP mode I can access a very few website via the internet link, but not most. I suspect this is a security issue. Windows says it cannot access and suggests running the diagnostics tool which comes up with "Cannot access using *TTP, *TTPS and suggests a firewall problem" I have tried turning off the Firewall but that doesn't help so again advice appreciated.

Sorry for the long post.

Regards

Alchad

for * read H.....wouldn't let me post with the actual abbreviation, thinks its a link :D
mpack
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Posts: 39156
Joined: 4. Sep 2008, 17:09
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
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Guest OSses: Mostly XP

Re: Can't access host from guest and vice-versa

Post by mpack »

Alchad wrote: on my Win 11 desktop have installed XPmode as guest
...
I can drill down and access the Sonylaptop (and obviously the Desktop) but not the Virtual PC

XP only supports SMB (now known as SMB1). SMB2 and SMB3 have come into existence since then, each upgrade bringing improved security and performance.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Message_Block.

The thing is that Windows 10 disables SMB1 by default, because of the poor performance and security. You have to enable it again using "OptionalFeatures.exe". I don't know if Windows 11 has a similar option, possibly it does.

This is obviously not ideal, since it means reopening your local network to the security and performance problems that made Microsoft disable the feature by default. Typically I would advise updating to a slightly newer Windows version (Win7 is usually ideal), but in this case I don't know what the effect would be on your Cambrige Azur network connection.

Do you happen to have a more detailed explanation of what Cambridge Azur actually requires on the networking front? It would be better if we had something more to go on than "avoid anything new".
Alchad
Posts: 4
Joined: 30. Dec 2022, 20:30

Re: Can't access host from guest and vice-versa

Post by Alchad »

Thank you for the reply.

I have been trying various permutations of SMB on and off. It looks like the best option is to enable SMB client on my Desktop which allows me to access the 640H and a shared Desktop music folder on the Virtual XP. I will just have to use this option only when moving music files around.

Re uprating to Win 7 - unfortunately this also suffers from the access problem when trying to network with the 640.

As for Cambridge Audio, I think there basic view is that the software was designed nearly 20 years ago and they supported it via a couple of Windows updates, but as Microsoft continued to improve security they(Cambridge) could no longer keep pace as there software was Windows CE based.

Thanks again, at least I've got a 80% solution.

Alchad
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