Bridged Networking Driver breaks my real network

[TestTestington]

Is this the right place to post for support?

I installed the latest version of VirtualBox 5.0 and as soon as it was done installing my network went down. The only way to fix my network is by disabling VirtualBox NDIS6 Bridged Networking Driver. I have windows 8.1 with all the latest drivers and updates. My network adaptor is Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller.

I need this to work so that my router can assign an IP directly to my guest machine. Please help.

[Walt47]

I have exactly the same problem and worked around it by disabling the "VirtualBox NDIS6 Bridging Driver". But there must be another way to get around this.
Why does not Oracle point this out. It happened on two machines already and it tookk me a while to find out how to fix it.

Oracle please tell us what we need to do!

Walt

[mpack]

Unless you're an Oracle customer and have paid for their very expensive support contract, I wouldn't count on getting direct support from Oracle!

These are user self help forums, where we pass things we learn to other users. You have done that, so thanks! That's all we can expect here.

[ugljesa]

If you disable the "VirtualBox NDIS6 Bridging Driver", then you can't assign a bridged interface to a VM, so that is not a solution.

Btw, I have the same problem, but my real network keeps running, just the icon near the clock says that there is no internet connection.

Helps if you open a command prompt on host and run: ipconfig /renew

[ugljesa]

Maybe I have the solution.
This is what I did:
- Open Network and Sharing Center > Change adapter settings > Local Area Connection > Properties
- Click on VirtualBox NDIS6 Bridged Networking Driver and Uninstall
- Click on Install, choose Service and choose VirtualBox NDIS6 Bridged Networking Driver to re-install it
- Restart host computer
After this I don't have problems with network any more.

[mpack]

Sounds like the old Win8 MaxNumFilters problem. In which case you may just have broken a different service on that NIC. The correct solution would be to increase the limit: I recommend Google for details.

[mroshaw]

I am experiencing the exact same problem. I'll give the MaxNumFilters fix a try and post back the outcome, when I get home from work tonight.

For anyone interested in trying this themselves:

1. Open regedit.exe
2. Navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Network\
3. Double click MaxNumFilters
4. Change the value to decimal 14
5. Click OK
6. Reboot

You may have to uninstall / re-install VB5.0

Note that if you did a fresh install of Windows 8.1, you might not see the MaxNumFilters value. In that case, Windows interprets the value as "unlimited" and so is unlikely to be related to this problem.

[mpack]

Your post is helpful, but...

In that case, Windows interprets the value as "unlimited" and so is unlikely to be related to this problem.

If that is true then it's a change of behaviour relative to Win8. In the latter, if unspecified then it defaults to 8. Why even have a limit if "unlimited" is a practical option? Do you have a reference for what you are saying?

[TestTestington]

I tried adding that reg key and restarting but it just seemed to break my network even more. ipconfig /renew doesn't work either because I can't connect to the DHCP server. Oh well, I hope this fixes itself in Windows 10 next week.

[Kiran]

I am also having the same issue with 5.0. Windows 7 SP1 x64 host. Network card can't connect to network. I tried uninstalling/reinstalling both Virtualbox, the NDIS6 driver, and already had the MaxNumFilters set to 14.

With the NDIS6 driver unbound to the adapter I can at least connect to the network, but have to run guest OSes using NAT.

Kiran

[Kiran]

I started a ticket on this issue. https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/14326

Kiran

[mroshaw]

Do you have a reference for what you are saying?

https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forum ... ?forum=wdk
Highly possible that I read that wrong, though. Apologies, if so, for misinformation.

[mpack]

Highly possible that I read that wrong, though. Apologies, if so, for misinformation.

Not at all. Having read it (thank you) I would interpret it the same way... I'm just not sure that it's correct, because I know we've had reports of where increasing this value cures the kind of problem described here - and this was specifically with Win8, since it seems to have become more of a problem in that version (I think Win8 defaults to having an extra filter or two in the stack, hence it has less headroom).

Unless this feature requires some sort of action from the driver which Win7 compatible drivers don't provide?

[GeeGee]

got the very same problem with 4.3.30 r101610 on Windows 8.1 x64.
WLAN loses connectivity, disabling and re-enabling adapter helps for a while.

[TestTestington]

OK, something interesting happened. I formatted and installed windows 10 and then I installed Virtual Box and now it works (on the same hardware). So there was some conflict with Windows 8 or the drivers or something.