Seems like someone sacrificed a chicken for me as the bridged networking connections now seems to work.
Here are the steps the led up to the problem and steps that I think resolved the problem.
Host OS WinXP SP3 (32bit, dual homed, VMWare Player installed), guest OS RHEL v5 (64bit).
- installed vbox 3.0.4 (fresh install, not an upgrade from prior versions)
- NAT was working with guest OS, guest OS could see the internet
- tried to bridge connections and couldn't select any network adapter (I think the drop down was grayed out)
- I uninstalled VMWare Player, VBox and rebooted. Reinstalled Vbox.
- NAT worked fine. When tried to bridge connections I could now see my local adapter, however when vbox started, it reported errors immediately (see previous post).
- tried numerous uninstalls and reinstalls, still didn't work
- tried using Microsoft uninstaller, reboot, reinstall, still didn't work
- tried using revo uninstaller, reboot, reinstall, still didn't work
- used revo uninstaller, reboot, downloaded vbox 3.0.6 beta from
http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/3.0.6_BETA1/ and installed. Crashed whenever trying to boot guest OS (however didn't have error reported above). Tried all virtual network adapters, still didn't work.
- uninstalled 3.0.6 beta, reboot and reinstalled 3.0.4 and suddenly it works.
My suspicion is that the 3.0.6 removed some lingering registry entries and cleaned it up. Since 3.0.6 is a beta, it could be dangerous to recommend this as a solution.
I then went to a coworker’s computer and the 3.0.4 install with bridged networking worked right away without any of the grief that I had. Speculation is that either my network card/driver combo is what caused my grief or it was the clash between vbox and VMWare player and an uninstaller bug.