Mounting host folders in a virtual box...

[DanTheMan]

I apologize in advance for my apparent stupidity, but I have multiple disabilities including semi-blindness that make my life rather difficult. And I want to do a very simple and non-esoteric thing, namely mount folders on the host system as (presumably) drive letters in the VirtualBox VM’s. (Both the host system and the VirtualBox VM's are running Windows 7 at this time.) After spending literally days trying to figure out how to do this and reading innumerable web pages that weren’t helpful, I’ve reached the point where I’m giving up trying to find out how to do this on my own. And I’m even willing to go the other way: Mount VirtualBox folders as drive letters on the host system. Can anyone either tell me how to do this very simple thing or direct me to a source that can tell me how to do this? The VirtualBox VM’s aren’t really all that useful if files can not be transferred to/from the host system.

I will add I tried to search for the answer to this question to no avail - I really don't know what keywords to search for. Pointing me to the answer in the user guide (wherever/whatever that is - remember I'm somewhat blind) might be good enough to get the answer. I pretty much manage to read after I've found the material I need to read.

[noteirak]

Use shared folders http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch04.h ... redfolders
They will appear as a network share in the guest, which you can map as network drive under a specific letter.

[DanTheMan]

Thank you for your response, but it didn't help at all. I'd already been there and done that and I went there and did that again with the same results: The host does not show up at all when you "Browse For Folder", only the guest itself shows up, which is, frankly, totally useless. Maybe I have to do something on the host, which I thought I did but it must have been the wrong thing because of the indicated result. I will note that I have not used networking in Windows since Novell Netware many moons ago; and since Windows networking is entirely different from what I can tell I have no clue as to how to use it, and my Novell experience (I was a Certified Netware Engineer and Certified Netware Instructor) is nothing but a millstone around my neck now.

[mpack]

Sorry, but Windows on Windows is one of the simplest cases, so if you can't get it to work then you can't have "been there done that".

The steps are simple:

1. Define one or more shared folders in the VM settings.
2. Install the Guest Additions (for simple shared folders support).

The shared folder can be found by browsing to "My Network Places" (or whatever your version of Windows calls it this week) --> "Entire Network" --> "VirtualBox Shared Folders" --> "\\Vboxsvr" --> share name. You can also map the share to a drive letter if you wish.

[DanTheMan]

Thank you for at least trying to help. But as I said, my Novell experiences are probably a millstone around my neck. Again, been there, done that, but I maybe completely misunderstand what's going on. At this minute, under "Settings/Shared Folders" in the virtual machine, I've got a share named "Share" pointing to "E:\Share", which is supposed to be a drive/folder on the host machine. I created this share through the "Browse for Folder" dialogue in the VM, and the host machine was listed there as was the proper drive on the host machine ("E:") and proper folder on that drive ("share"). However, every time I go into that dialogue, I get a message that "Guest Additions" are not installed and to therefor install them, which I've done what, 6, 7, 8 times????? (Yes, I'm extremely frustrated. My life is difficult enough due to my several disabilities, I don't really need this kind of crap to make things even worse. At this point I regret that I ever got started on this whole thing.) To recap, I go into the "Devices/Shared Folders", and it tells me that "The Virtual Guest Additions do not appear to be available on this virtual machine, ...", I do "Devices/Install Guest Additions" over and over and over again (I must be over a dozen attempts at this point in time), and nothing appears to happen as a result, I go back into "Devices/Shared Folders", and it tells me yet again that "The Virtual Guest Additions do not appear to be installed." At this point that's the end of the story.

[mpack]

Moved to "Windows Guests" as this discussion is not generic.

Well, we need to prove one way or another whether you have the GAs installed, as the feature will not work without them. To prove that please post the VM log file as a .ZIP attachment. The VM log file is called "VBox.log" and can be found in the "Logs" subfolder of the VM folder.

Please note that all that happens when you choose Devices | Install Guest Additions... is that a virtual CD containing the GAs is inserted in the virtual drive. If you have autorun enabled then the installer dialog pops up and off you go. If you have autorun disabled then you need to start the GA installer manually. I.e. inside the guest you need to browse to the virtual CD drive and double click the VBoxWindowsAdditions.exe file. For neatness, remember to unmount the GAs CD when you're done.

[DanTheMan]

Thank you for that information, that's probably the problem. It would be nice if it gave me an error message when that happens; as I said before it does nothing at all. However, if I try go to the D: drive (what I assume is the virtual CD - there aren't any other "valid" drive letters), it tells me that "The volume does not contain a recognized file system. Please make sure that all required file system drivers are loaded and that the volume is not corrupted". (I will note that I generally use a command line and not the Windows GUI because of my semi-blindness. However, a similar thing happens from the GUI.) At any rate, I don't know where to go from there. Do I have to "mount" that "CD"? If so, how do I do that?

As a side question, how do I get "My Computer" (or its equivalent) on the desktop? My desktop only contains the "Recycle Bin" icon and nothing else. This is just a "convenience" issue.

[noteirak]

If you could attach the log file as decribed by mpack, it would greately help.

[DanTheMan]

Sorry. You didn't say exactly where it was, and I initially couldn't find it and forgot about it. Here it is.

[mpack]

The log says that you have the GAs ISO mounted in your VM, but the GAs are not installed. So, see the final paragraph of my last message, telling you how to install them manually.

[DanTheMan]

I sincerely thank you for looking into it, but somehow you're really missing the ultimate point. Again, if I go to the D: drive (what I assume to be the virtual CD drive and the only other "active" drive letter besides "C") it says (quoting again): "The volume does not contain a recognized file system. Please make sure that all required file system drivers are loaded and that the volume is not corrupted". I obviously can not load anything from a drive that doesn't have a "recognized file system".

[mpack]

I'm afraid that I can't tell from the log what drive letter the guest OS assigns to drives. But yes, if it only has one hard disk then I would expect that D: is the CD. I would suggest however that you restart your VM to ensure that it has recognized the disk change - I note from the log that you have a habit of suspending rather than shutting down the VM, which may lead to an accumulation of crud.

[DanTheMan]

Please forgive me, but because of my disabilities I'm kind of stupid (no joke!). So the question is "how do I 'shut down' a machine?" (vs. "close" and I don't know what "ACPI Shutdown" even is. I'd prefer not to spend more hours experimenting with this.

[noteirak]

The same way you would shutdown your own pc : use the start menu inside the VM.

[DanTheMan]

First, on the humorous side: I literally never shut down Windows on this machine ("Sleep" during the day, "Hibernate" at night, and "Reboot" when needed) and since I'm half-blind and the contrast on that button ain't all that high (white on light blue) I had forgotten that you even could shut down Windows.

But back to the serious side, shutting down Windows in the VM/the VM itself as suggested above and even rebooting the physical computer did not fix the problem. I still get the error message "The volume does not contain a recognized file system..." when I try to go to the D: drive in the virtual machine, which, again, I assume is supposed to be the virtual CD drive.