Shared folder problems

[Eric G.]

Hi,

I'm trying to map a shared folder for a Win 2003 x32 guest running on a Win 7 x64 host. I have a c:\shared drive that I've shared. If I try to add it to my shared folders in side my Win 2003 settings (auto-mount, make permanent) I get:

Failed to create the shared folder shared pointing to c:\\shared for the virtual machine Windows 2003.

Shared folder path 'c:\\shared' is not absolute.

On my guest box, I see nothing if I try to hit \\vboxsvr, but if I go to \\123.123.123.123\shared I can get to my shared folder, so this is a pretty acceptable work-around, but I don't understand why I can't get it to work the "normal" way.

-Eric

[Eric G.]

One problem that I'm still having that my work-around doesn't solve: I can get to a shared folder on my host, by entering the host's ip address on the guest, but the host can't find shared resources on the guest by its ip address.

-Eric

[mpack]

You are asking why "C:\" doesn't work as a network address? Why would you expect it to? Every PC on the network has its own C: drive.

[Eric G.]

You are asking why "C:\" doesn't work as a network address? Why would you expect it to? Every PC on the network has its own C: drive.

I would expect that when I add a shared folder it would would be more or less doing a

net share shared=c:\shared

If I click on the down arrow in the add share gui, I'm presented with an file explorer dialog box that lets me pick a folder on my local hdd, so I use it to browse to "c:\shared."

Actually, I just did it that way (rather than typing it in) and it worked. Hmmm, maybe it was doing it through the UI that fixed it, I notice it didn't escape the \ character when I did it through the gui i.e. the box showed c:\shared instead of c:\\shared.

Another possiblity as to why it worked that time is that I was already sharing c:\shared. Just prior to my doing the share through the gui, I'd done a net share shared /d.

-Eric

[Perryg]

Perhaps you should review chapter 4.3 Shared folders in your VirtualBox users manual.