Any help is greatly appriciated - I'm having a weird IPX issue with VirtualBox/Windows XP

[thurmansevolution]

Hello and thank you in advance for taking the time to read this, and for any help that is given. I'm nearly at my "wits end" with this issue and have tried every possible thing I can think of to get IPX working between two guest Window XP machines in Virtualbox.

To give a larger scenario -

I am using two laptops - "Laptop A" is a Lenovo Edge 15 (Intel Core i3) running Windows 10, fully updated. "Laptop B" is a Dell Inspiron 15 (Intel Core i3) running Windows 10, fully updated. Both laptops have 8GB Ram and are running the latest version of Virtual Box, and VB is configured on both laptops to bridge the network connection on the virtual interfaces. Both guest OSes (I'll refer to as "Laptop A1" and "Laptop B1") are Windows XP SP3 machines, both with IPX enabled on their local area connections. And during testing (while safely restricting internet access), I've momentarily disabled guest level OS firewall to ensure that there would be no firewall issues. All hosts and guests machines are able to obtain an IP address and successfully ping each other's IPv4 address.

No matter what I try, I can't get IPX working between both guest Windows XP machines, whether testing through gaming (Diablo and Starcraft) or even testing in dxdiag. I also tried adjusting the IPX protocol settings to 802.3 with 00000001 network with the same results - both machines can't see each other via IPX. I've tried checking IPX via DOSBox between both laptops (Basically starting up a multiplayer Doom game), which IPX works flawlessly, but getting IPX going between Windows XP machines via VirtualBox has been challenging. I know it can be done - I've done it years ago and it worked well. This time around (and I've done a lot of google searches, etc before coming here lol) I'm lost...is there something I'm missing (maybe in the config of Virtualbox or Win XP)? Or is anyone having similar issues? Any help would be greatly appreciated and thank you again for your time and any help given.

[scottgus1]

Please check that each XP can ping the other. If they both can ping each other, then the Virtualbox network is working and the problem lies somewhere else.

[fth0]

You didn't mention how the two laptops are connected. According to the VirtualBox User Manual, VirtualBox doesn't support IPX when the VM's virtual network adapter is bridged to a wireless network adapter on the host.

PS: I was surprised that VirtualBox 7.0 still supports IPX. Most routers removed IPX/SPX support many years ago.