virtualbox.org

Under Windows XP and VirtualBox V1 & V2, I could store all the information related to guest environments on the partition with the vdi harddisks etc. Everything was in one place. Any user of the Windows PC host could use any guest (as long as they had an userid/password for that guest). Now, under Vista and VirtualBox V3, each user on the Windows PC has their own configuration in "C:\Users\<username>\.VirtualBox" directory. Even setting the Preferences for the machine and harddisk information to point to directories on the reserved partition doesn't stop VirtualBox looking in the user's own directory. With these prefences set, deleting the user's "C:\Users\<username>\.VirtualBox" directory causes VirtualBox to assume it is a first time user. Setting the preferences to be the same as everyone else (i.e. on the partition where another user put the information) doesn't work - it says there are no guests defined as there are none in that user's personal directory.

Since all the users on the PC use the same guest systems, is there anyway to tell VirtualBox to look for all information in a "non-user specific" directory that I can specify?

Thanks

If you set the environmental variable VBOX_USER_HOME as system variable, it will give all users on the local computer the set location as settings and VM location. You might need to change the paths in the VB preferences from File > Preferences to the same location. As long as a VirtualBox.xml file is there, the users should all see the same guests and be able to access them.

Many thanks.

David