XP virtual host for use with old printer/Vinyl cutter

[block]

Hi everyone,

I have just installed and set up Oracle virtual box running windows XP. My reason for doing this is so I can use a Cutter plotter that isn't compatible with my windows 7 machine. This is becoming a bit of a headache.

I have a new desktop and I was going to run XP on that but I was told about virtual box and thought I would give it a go. First of all for what I need (running old drivers for plotter) will I be able to do this?
or will it be better just to run it on a separate machine and avoid the hassle?

At the moment I am set up but having issues with USBs and sharing files. I have printed off the manual, downloaded the add on, I'm testing a USB flash drive, filtered it and put remote setting to Yes etc but still struggling. Can anyone point me in the right direction for fixing these issues?

[mpack]

A virtual machine is one in which all the hardware is simulated. Once you get into the situation of trying to get a VM to talk to real hardware you IMHO always run into problems. Maybe it will work - sometimes - but I would never want to rely on it.

Better IMHO to install XP natively on a separate machine: if you can live without the leading edge pretty graphics (*) then you should find XP perfectly capable of doing what it's mainly supposed to do, i.e. operate the hardware.

(*) And if you do miss the pretty graphics then you'll find that you can download XP themes that get pretty close to the Win7 look.