[Solved] Printing Problems

[Tvan]

I am running XP Pro 32 bit in VB on my host machine which is Vista 64 bit. I've searched this forum and the manual, but cannot find the answer to my specific issue. I have two printers that I use, one color and another that's a laser. I have installed the color printer in XP and got it to work, but am having a devil of a time trying to install the laser printer...still haven't got it installed. I should be able to work that out, but when I attach the color printer to XP in the VB it no longer works in the Vista host system even when I shut down the VB. In order to get them to work again in Vista I have to reboot the machine and it's a pain in the butt. How can I use my two printers with Vista and XP at the same time without rebooting? Please bear with me because I'm a newbie to Virtual Box and haven't done any file or printer sharing before.

[Perryg]

Don't use the USB connection in the guest to connect to it. Use network printing instead.
You need to setup Vista to allow network connections and also setup the share on the printer.
All of this of course depends on you having a router where you can set the guest to use bridged mode instead of NAT.

[Tvan]

Thanks for the reply. I've attempted to follow the manual concerning Bridged Adapters, but not getting anywhere. I have Network Discovery, Printer Sharing, and File Sharing turned on in Vista, and also have the printers set to share. But, when trying to set up the virtual machine settings to use a Bridged Adapter there is no named adapter listed and I get the error message.... "on the Network Adapter 1 page, no bridged network adapter is selected"

As I said, I'm a newbie at this stuff...never messed with networks and such before. I do have a wireless router that my PC is hard-wired to, but I have no idea what that has to do with a bridged adapter. I got into this mess simply because I have a favorite graphics program that won't run on 64 bit Vista, but didn't realize it until I bought the new machine and tried to install it. It's a 16 bit program (pretty darn old, but good) and will run in a 32 bit environment, but not 64 bit.

[Perryg]

You may need to reinstall VBox. Follow the instructions below.

• right click on the install program.
  Left click on run as admin.
  Select repair and see if it installs all of the drivers.

You will not loose your guest and then you should install the guest additions to be able to get all the benefits of VBox.
Then make sure to shut down the guest and go into the network settings and select bridged.
You should see below that your hosts network adapter listed.
Close and open/start the guest. See if you have an Internet connection.

[Tvan]

Thanks for your help, but I seem to be getting nowhere here. I repaired Vbox as Admin, but still do not have any adapters showing when I try to set the settings to Bridged Adapter...still the same as before with the same error message.

[Perryg]

What version of VBox are you using?

[Tvan]

I'm using the newest version, 3.0.6, which I just downloaded a few days ago.

[Perryg]

Did you update or was this a clean install?
Only reason I ask is there were some problems updating from version 2.x.x.
Anyway I will watch for you answer and see what else needs to be done tomorrow.

[Tvan]

This was a clean install as I just found out about Vbox a few days ago while searching for means of doing a dual boot with 2 OS on one PC. There may possibly be an issue with my router. I tried to access the online interface earlier and it wouldn't load. Tomorrow morning I'm going to reinstall and reconfigure my router before trying anything else with Vbox.

[Tvan]

OK...I reinstalled and reconfigured my router and now have access to the online interface again. I also did a repair on Vbox as Admin....still no bridged adapter showing to choose when trying to set the network settings in Vbox.

[vbox4me2]

Make a screen dump from the VM adapter settings.

[Tvan]

I have no idea what a screen dump from the VM adapter settings is let alone how to do it...lol..you totally lost me on that one.

[vbox4me2]

Bring up the screen from the VBox GUI where you select Bridge, then hit the printscreen button, paste it in paint or whatever and attach that jpeg/bmp here.

[Tvan]

This is what I have after selecting Bridged Adapter. There is nothing listed for the name of the adapter.

[vbox4me2]

Are you sure you have installed VBox with elevated status (run as administrator)? no other weird stuff installed like third party firewall or vpn software or anti virus with network protection??? you could try vbox 2.2.4