Getting Windows NT4 Guest Networking Working

[ranthog]

I'm trying to move an old NT 4 server onto a virtual machine and everything worked A-OK out of the box except for networking. I did attempt to install the AMD PC NET drivers off the CD, but the OS doesn't seem to recognize that there is a network there.

Has anyone gotten networking to work under NT4?

[stefan.becker]

Yes, it works. For me its a "PCnet-FAST III (Am79C73)".

[ranthog]

How did you get it working?

So far I haven't been able to get that working using the driver that came with NT4 and that specific network card on the VM.

[Perryg]

You need to either add or manually setup the IP protocol. Of course this mean you need a router in the network for Bridged or use NAT if you don't have a router. Add a second adapter set to host-only to interact with the host if you use NAT. You should read chapter 6 of your VirtualBox users guide.

NT-net.png (7.76 KiB) Viewed 10251 times

[ranthog]

Bridged settings on the VM have not been an issue with my Linux and FreeBSD. I've attached images of the network settings I'm using.

I do have to admit that NT4 was out of date before I was out of high school, so I am much less comfortable configuring it. When I do an "ipconfig /all" command it doesn't look like it is recognizing the adapter. Maybe you can see what I was doing wrong.

VB Guest Network Settings

VB-VMNetworkSettings.PNG (11.46 KiB) Viewed 10241 times

NT4 Adaptor Settings 1

VB-Adaptor Settings.PNG (9.39 KiB) Viewed 10241 times

NT4 Adapter Settings 2

VB-Adaptor Settings2.PNG (8.65 KiB) Viewed 10241 times

[ranthog]

Here are the TCP/IP Connection settings for the network adapter.

[Perryg]

Your screen shots show that it recognizes the adapter.

So the trick is, if you set the guest to use NAT the address you gave the guest is wrong, and if you set it to bridged, the address is also wrong.
If you look at my screens hots it show to use dhcp.

Note: If you don't have a router in the network you must use NAT and add a second adapter set to host-only for the host and guest to communicate.

Did you really read Chapter 6 in your VirtualBox users guide?

[ranthog]

I have read over the networking section. Bridged networking is necessary because this will be a legacy server. I went ahead and verified those TCP/IP settings and they are valid for our network using a Linux virtual machine. I tried to enable DHCP for my adapter, but it is grayed out.

Now I did notice one difference between our systems tonight when double checking things. The adapter for your system is showing up as a "AMD PCNET PCI Ethernet Adapter", but after installing the adapter on my system off the NT4 CD it shows up as a "AMD PCNET ISA/VESA Ethernet Adapter". Am I choosing the wrong drivers from somewhere else?

Thanks for taking a look at this.

[Perryg]

What does ipconfig /all show in a cmd window?

[ranthog]

Here is the result of my ipconfig /all

Results of ipconfig /all

VB-IPCONFIGALL.PNG (7.94 KiB) Viewed 10214 times

[ranthog]

Okay, after some sleep and stepping away from the problem I realize I had forgotten to do one thing while troubleshooting: Attempt to install a fresh copy of NT4 on the virtual machine to see if I can replicate the problem. The fresh install of NT works just fine and I can access the network from it. When I install the AMD PC Net drivers they show up as the PCI version instead of the ISA version.

So I'm obviously missing some step I need to do to reconfigure NT4 for the new hardware.