virtualbox.org

Running Win7 guest on WinXP host.

Have guest additions installed.

Have read the manual.

Have made a folder in the C: drive on my host; called it "VB Shared Folder"

In XP, have made it shared, permissions = anyone can use it, full control.

In the Win7 guest, under devices/shared folders, I use the dialog box to browse to the shared folder easily. There are two selection boxes for Read-Only and Make Permanent.

Whether I do or do not check either of those boxes, the OK button remains grayed out and I can't enable the shared folder.

I tried enabling it in the main VB window with the V-machine shut off, but the same thing happens. I browse to the "VB Shared Folder" but whether I do or do not check the Read Only box, the OK button remains grayed out and I can't enable the share.

Would really appreciate some help.

Try a short name without spaces, like 'vbshare1'.

Excellent!

For years after Windows allowed long file names and spaces, I still used 8 character = 3 names because I didn't trust the new scheme to work all the time. Now that I have been lulled into a false sense of confidence....

Thanks to you, when I made the share name VBshare, the Button said OK! and I enabled the share folder...

...but the share folder doesn't show up in Windows Explorer. If I shut off the machine the share shows up in the main VirtualBox settings module; but when I turn the machine back on, even though it's still listed as a share shared folder in the devices/share folder menu, it doesn't show up as an available resource in Windows Explorer

The manual notes the command to mount the shared folder, use that one:

With this issue i found you can still use long files, but it dose not like spaces in the file name(VB_Shared_Folder). So feel free to use long file names, just be sure not to use any spaces.

Well, it turns out using spaces was a really foolish thing for me to do.

I used spaces not only in the shared folder name but in the machine name: "Win 7 RC - 4" (the last bit to designate it was machine number 4)

When I changed the machine name to "Win7RC_4" the shared folder appeared in Windows Explorer and all was well.

Thanks very much for you assistance.