virtualbox.org

I'm running VirtualBox 2.0.2 (yesterday tried with VB 1.6.4 with the same result) on Vista Business. The guest is also a Vista Business which I want to back up using the Acronis True Image Home 10 boot CD.

When I open the Extras|Options dialog in True Image, the IP address is not correctly fetched from DHCP. After having set up the IP address, Gateway and DNS server manually, the backup dialog can see my workgroup and the host machine, but fails with the network shares. When I specify the network share location myself, e.g. \\vista\shared\backup.tib, it takes approx. two minutes until it shows me the authentication dialog. No matter, what I enter, it fails.

When I boot the same True Image from within VMWare Player 2, I get the authentication dialog immediately after expanding the host's machine name and it can find the network share within one or two seconds.

I've tried the Adapter Types "PCnet-FAST III" as well as "Intel PRO/1000 MT Desktop" on NAT and Hostinterface without finding a difference. VMWare Player is configured to use "Bridged" network access.

Why do you want to create a backup of your VM using a program used for creating a backup image of a machine when you can backup the VDI itself? By default, the drives are stored in your user profile. I'm not sure where it's stored in Vista, but in XP it's in the user profile folder\.virtualbox.

I know that the virtual hard disks can be backed up. I want to create a back up using True Image for two reasons:
- I want to try the same image on VMWare or Virtual PC
- I want to shrink the virtual partition by backing it up, creating a smaller virtual partition and restore it (the virtual partition grows up dramatically when I'm running JkDefrag and I could not find a way to shrink it with VirtualBox).

BTW, your question did not answer my question, why I can't get True Image's networking to work where this is not problem with VMWare and Virtual PC.

It's possible that Vista is in error here, because I had no problems getting Acronis True Image to work on my PC by restoring my own Host install to a VM (though the VM wouldn't boot because of broken MBR). It did get a DHCP address from VB with NAT setting. IIRC, I used the Intel/Pro1000MT NIC.

Does the VB process have full access to the network of your Host?

Sasquatch wrote:Does the VB process have full access to the network of your Host?

How should I find this out? I'm having no personal firewall installed on Vista (the machine is in a LAN behind a router incl. firewall to the internet) and my account has plain user privileges - if this matters. On the host system the Windows firewall is active, but the DHCP settings is still not initialized correctly when I boot True Image in VB with the Windows firewall disabled on the host (I had to always disable the Sunbelt Personal Firewall on my XP Pro notebook to be able to connect to the internet or host from inside VMWare).

Just tried with Acronis True Image 11 Home, interface attached to NAT with the Intel/Pro1000 MT Desktop, no problem getting it to work. I used the IP address of 10.0.2.2 to connect to my PC. Got the authentication right away and worked like a charm. And this was done with my firewall on, Agnitum Outpost Firewall Pro. I do have it set to allow VB full access.

Very strange: now it works suddenly. Maybe rebooting a couple of times between yesterday and now had changed something. Nevertheless, thank you for your effort.

Update: I'm now using IntelPRO/1000 MT Desktop connected with Hostinterface. NAT did not work.