Host shared-folder stop working and guest hangs

[Lalex86]

Hi,

i recently experiencied a problem with a virtual machine running Windows 7 as guest on a Windows 10 Host.

An entire drive of the host (DRIVE_D) is shared (permanent, automount) with the guest with full rights. All works fine for some hours (or maybe until there are few accesses) then the shared drive stops working and becomes inaccessible from the guest (it works normally on host side). Then the virtual machine hangs and i can only reset and restart it.

The machine was working fine until recent versions of Virtual Box. THe problem started surely from when i upgraded to 5.1 family, maybe with last updates of the 5.0.x family, too.

In the log i can see only some RESET (i do) due to VM locks.

Thanks Alessandro

[Frykky]

I have exactly the same problem!

[mpack]

I would suspect that the problem is your host OS. Windows 10 doesn't like people accessing the root folder of a local drive. I suggest that the problem would go away if you confined VM shared access to an actual folder. In fact this would be sensible for many reasons.

[Lalex86]

Thanks for the suggestion but it is difficult to apply....all paths would be changed...

Any other method to diagnose if it is that the problem and to say to Windows 10 to "keep calm"?

Alessandro

I would suspect that the problem is your host OS. Windows 10 doesn't like people accessing the root folder of a local drive. I suggest that the problem would go away if you confined VM shared access to an actual folder. In fact this would be sensible for many reasons.

[mpack]

Thanks for the suggestion but it is difficult to apply....all paths would be changed...

I assume you must mean on the host, since of course the guest doesn't care at all about the host's path to a shared folder.

[JonDo]

I have the same problem, my guest is a Windows 7 64bit (Vanilla) and the host is Fedora 24 (64bit)

[Lalex86]

I assume you must mean on the host, since of course the guest doesn't care at all about the host's path to a shared folder.

No i mean on guest side. Now i have shared the whole D:\ drive seen as guest D:\ drive so paths in guest are D:\subfolder.......

If then i share d:\subfolder....as guest D:\ i lost one level in all guest path.

Alessandro

[mpack]

You are mistaken. A guest can't access a host drive, so your decision inside the guest to label a network share as "D:" has nothing to do with the actual path on the host.

[Lalex86]

You are mistaken. A guest can't access a host drive, so your decision inside the guest to label a network share as "D:" has nothing to do with the actual path on the host.

Sorry but i don't understand what your saying. Try to explain with a sample:

NOW
Host share D:\ (root) drive
Guest map the share as D:. A file in the host d:\documents\projects\file1.ext is referred in guest with the same pathname that is d:\documents\projects\file1.ext

IF I CHANGE SHARING NOT THE ROOT BUT A SUBFOLDER
Host share a subfolder of d: say D:\documents
Guest map the share as d:. Now the same file is referret on the guest as d:\projects\file\.ext......the all references on the guest are broken....

Right?
Alessandro

[mpack]

Guest map the share as D:

No it doesn't, not unless you assign a drive letter to the share from inside the guest. That drive letter could be assigned to any share, it does not need to be your host drive D.

Simple example: I have a folder on my C: drive, "C:\Shared". I share this with the VM using the network share name "SHARED". The full path of that network share is \\VBoxSVR\SHARED. Inside the guest I assign the drive letter Z to \\VBoxSVR\SHARED, so now the guest can view that folder as Z:\*.

Note that my host does not have a drive Z. Hopefully this makes it obvious to you that a drive letter mapped to a share from inside a Windows guest has nothing whatever to do with the location of the folder on the host. If not then I'm afraid I'll just have to leave you to it, since I don't think I can make it any simpler.