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Win7 RC Guest won't recognize serial port

Posted: 18. Jun 2009, 17:56
by fmichtmw
I am unable to get my Windows 7 RC Guest to recognize any serial port. I have a Vista 32-bit host with a functional COM3 port. The IRQ and I/O Port are standard for COM3, and it is on-board (no USB-to-serial adapter). In the VirtualBox setup, I have one serial port enabled, Port Number = COM3, Port Mode = Host Device, Port/FilePath = COM3. Windows 7 RC boots just fine, so that tells me that VirtualBox was able to open the port, but in Device Manager, the COM port is just not recognized. The new hardware detection wizard doesn't detect it, and if I add it manually, it is flagged as not functioning, even after a restart of the guest. I am running 2.2.4 of VirtualBox.

Has anyboby else run into this problem? Am I missing something? Or shall I log this in the issue tracker?

Re: Win7 RC Guest won't recognize serial port

Posted: 19. Jun 2009, 02:57
by Perryg
I tested this myself today since you brought it up and Win 7 RC does not detect the port. XP and Ubuntu do. I suspect it may be a problem at this point with Win 7 and the fact that they are still trying to get it right, but can not tell you why yet. I will of course post back if I find out something different.

PS: I did have something plugged in to that port. It may not detect unless there is something physically plugged in.

Re: Win7 RC Guest won't recognize serial port

Posted: 19. Jun 2009, 14:30
by fmichtmw
I tried it both ways. I tested it with a driver-less serial foot pedal connected as well as disconnected prior to starting VirtualBox.

Thank you for confirming my issue. It's good to know I'm not alone. I'll log an issue in about a week unless a solution is reported on this thread until then.

Re: Win7 RC Guest won't recognize serial port

Posted: 25. Jun 2009, 07:17
by prasad.nadig
I had the same issue too!!
Only I have a windows 7 RC Host & trying to run Win XP on VBox 2.2.4.
WIndows 7 RC doesn't seem to recognize the COM ports. Please do let me know if you found any work around for it.

Re: Win7 RC Guest won't recognize serial port

Posted: 7. Jul 2009, 09:56
by antonign
Host OS: Windows XP SP3
Guest OS: Windows 7 RC 7100
VirtualBox: 3.0.0 r49315

The issue still exists :(

Re: Win7 RC Guest won't recognize serial port

Posted: 7. Jul 2009, 15:11
by Perryg
prasad.nadig wrote:I had the same issue too!!
Only I have a windows 7 RC Host & trying to run Win XP on VBox 2.2.4.
WIndows 7 RC doesn't seem to recognize the COM ports. Please do let me know if you found any work around for it.
Are you saying that the HOST will not see the serial port, even without having VBox running?
If so then the problem would be Win7RC and serial ports, not a VBox problem.
I do not nor will I have Win7RC as a host (can't afford to in my production environment) so I can not confirm this, but it would be nice if others that have Win7RC as host could.

Re: Win7 RC Guest won't recognize serial port

Posted: 3. Dec 2009, 21:38
by ryab3
antonign wrote:Host OS: Windows XP SP3
Guest OS: Windows 7 RC 7100
VirtualBox: 3.0.0 r49315

The issue still exists :(
I have the same problem: Vista as guest cannot detect serial port too

host OS: Windows XP SP3
guest OS: Windows Vista
Virtual Box 3.1.0-55467

I've tried to connect the virtual serial port to a software pipe on the WinXP host (named "\\.\pipe\com_1") to work with COM4 port. This combination works fine on WinXP guest, but Vista guest doesn't detect such port.

Re: Win7 RC Guest won't recognize serial port

Posted: 11. Dec 2009, 05:38
by vacri
Same issue here - and I need that serial port.

Host: standard Ubuntu 9.10

Guest: XP SP1 32bit - sees serial port fine
Guest: Win7 32bit - no serial port listed in Device Manager.

Both guests are run individually so it's not a competition between the guests. The version of Win7 is directly off the Dell install CD, not an RC.

Any ideas?

Re: Win7 RC Guest won't recognize serial port

Posted: 16. Dec 2009, 04:00
by SergioTorresC
I am having the same problem.

My host is running Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bits. It has an LSI PCI-SV92PP Soft Modem attached to COM3.

I tried reporting the serial port to several guest machines:
a) Windows 7 Pro 64 bits.
b) Windows 7 Pro 32 bits.
c) Windows XP Pro 32 bits.

I tried to report the serial port, for each of the guest machines, as:
a) COM3, Host Device, COM3
b) COM1, Host Device, COM3
c) COM3, Host Pipe, \\.\pipe\vmwaredebug (running vmwaregateway /t)
d) COM1, Host Pipe, \\.\pipe\vmwaredebug (running vmwaregateway /t)

The serial port was not detected by any of the guest machines in any of the configurations.

When running the host pipe configuration, vmwaregateway reported pipe connected/disconnected at the guest machine's Boot/Shoot Down times, but the serial port was not seen.

Any ideas?

Re: Win7 RC Guest won't recognize serial port

Posted: 16. Dec 2009, 06:16
by SergioTorresC
I followed the procedure jorgensen states and the serial port is now working in my Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bits guest.

Jorgensen post "How to Add a Serial Port in XP Guest." is here:

forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=23956&p=106482&hilit=+serial+port#p106482

Re: Win7 RC Guest won't recognize serial port

Posted: 5. Jan 2010, 04:52
by vacri
To clarify Sergio's find a little more - the actions to perform in the Win7 guest are a little different to XP. You don't search for new hardware as listed in the linked thread, as Win7 will never find it (or didn't for me). Once the serial port was set up in the host, the following steps gave me what looked to be a functioning serial port (can't test it as I'm lacking the hardware at the moment)

Go into Device Manager (not Add Device), easiest is to just type "Device Manager" in the search box in the start menu
In Device Manager, highlight "Ports (COM & LPT)"
In the Action menu, select "Add Legacy Hardware" and click next
Select "Install the hardware that I manually select from a list" and click next
Select "Ports" in the list and click next
Select "Standard Port Types/Communications Port" and click through to finish

You'll now have a new COM port, probably COM3. It will probably just work after a reboot, but if not, you can do the following two things (from the port's Properties page) to help play around:

Change from COM3 to COMx (if you want to) in the Port Settings tab under Advanced
Go into the Resources tab and select Set Configuration Manually. Untick Use Automatic Settings, select Basic Config 8 in the dropdown, then highlight IRQ or I/O range and click Change Setting. Give the values that are listed where you set the serial port in the virtualbox host software for that guest machine.

Like I said, haven't been able to actually test yet, but it appears to be a working port with no warnings, which is better than previously having no entry. Thanks to Sergio for finding the other thread for clues.

Re: Win7 RC Guest won't recognize serial port

Posted: 5. Jan 2010, 22:56
by kjbrock
I've been trying to get a pipe-based serial port working on Windows 7 Ultimate, and what I get after adding the legacy hardware and rebooting is a COM entry which shows up with the little yellow triangle in Device Manager which indicates a problem. Doesn't say what the problem *is*. The hardware resources match the ones set when I defined the port. My host system doesn't have any physical serial ports to play around with.

What I'd eventually like to have is two Windows 7 guests connected to each other via a virtual serial cable, and I was thinking that the pipe-based serial port looked like the best bet for that.

Has anyone here gotten two systems connected that way? Is it known to be possible/impossible?

Kevin

Re: Win7 RC Guest won't recognize serial port

Posted: 5. Jan 2010, 23:31
by kjbrock
Problem with the pipe-based port was that Windows 7 wanted me to manually specify resources. If I manually specified the same values that had been entered automatically, it said the port was functioning properly.

Re: Win7 RC Guest won't recognize serial port

Posted: 6. Jan 2010, 04:27
by vacri
Troubleshooting that is beyond my abilities, but for me when I first installed the COM port, I got the yellow warning icon. I played with it a bit and unchecked the auto settings, but couldn't get the warning removed. I shut off the guest so I could look up the specific values for the port, and when I rebooted the port had autodetected those settings and already applied them. This is why I suggested rebooting before fiddling manually above.

But as for the pipes... it doesn't make sense to me since I would have thought the piping was entirely done on the host and all the guest would see would be the same emulated serial interface.

Re: Win7 RC Guest won't recognize serial port

Posted: 7. Jan 2010, 21:53
by kjbrock
Rebooting wasn't enough in my case. Maybe it's because you unchecked the auto settings before your reboot.

Yes, guests see the serial interface. I want to connect them so that the guests are talking to each other over a virtual serial cable. It's not quite as straightforward as it seems. I've got a basic connection working, but there are some problems.

For debugging one guest from another this is a useful feature... It looks like it would be simpler if I was doing this with a Windows-based host as well as Windows 7 guests.