I'm new to VirtualBox and am excited to learn all its ins and outs. To start slowly I installed in on my XP Pro system and installed (big surprise) XP Pro as the first guest. Then I wanted to view a share on the host from within the guest. Searching the forums pointed me to the manual, but the manual was a bit terse. No biggie, it's a good manual.
However, since I have a coworker for whom I wrote these instructions, I thought I'd also paste them here in case others would find them useful.
B.
Allowing a Windows VirtualBox GUEST to access shares on the Windows HOST:
1. Create VirtualBox GUEST (at least Windows 2000 or newer)
2. Start GUEST
3. From the Devices dropdown menu at the top of the frame, mount the following iso file (it is on the HOST computer):
C:\Program Files\Sun\VirtualBox\VBoxGuestAdditions.iso (default location of iso when you install VB)
4. Once the ISO is mounted, the GUEST will see it and walk you through the installation wizard
5. Reboot GUEST
6. You can now unmount the iso for the GUEST
7. Create a shared folder on your HOST computer. The shared folder MUST have a "share name" (the default is the name of the folder). [NOTE: VirtualBox does not like spaces or underline charactes, so just make it a simple share name.]
8. When the GUEST is up, go to a command prompt window. You will have to use the NET USE command:
NET USE z: \\vboxsvr\share /persistent
NOTE: "z:" can be any unused drive letter
NOTE: "\\vboxsvr" is correct, literally, do not use the HOST system name
NOTE: "share" is the name of the share on the HOST system
EXAMPLE:
I created a share on the HOST: D:\everyone
So, the command I ran on the GUEST to make a permanent connection as drive "z" was:
NET USE z: \\vboxsvr\everyone /persistent