virtualbox.org

Hey Guys,

I've been using VirtualBox with my Ubuntu 13.04 guest for ages in bridged network mode and its been fine, but I recently updated to Win 8.1 and had issues.

I'm not sure if its Win 8.1 causing this or cos I update VirtualBox. Here is what happened:

I updated to Win 8.1 and went to boot my Ubuntu guest, was told by VB that it could not find a bridged network. So Looked in settings and had no option under "name" for the bridged adaptor. So assumed when 8.1 installed it lost the network connection VB installs.

So I updated to VB 4.3 and the option appeared again, but on booting my Ubuntu the boot screen got stuck on "Waiting for Netwrok Configuration" and then "Waiting another 60 seconds" and then it just booted with no network.

I tried going back to 4.2.18 and the same issue occurred.

Any idea what would have caused this? I need to use bridged and I need my VB, so do I need to reinstall Windows back to 8?

Any help appreciated!

Windows 8.1 support is still experimental for now - it only came out few days ago.

Try to do a full uninstall of Virtualbox, reboot, then install, then reboot, and see if the VM works again like expected.
Also, double check if the Windows built-in firewall is not causing you issues by disabling it if not the case already.

Cheers noteirak, I did a reinstall of VB, both version 4.3 and 4.2.18 and it didn't fix it. I've just gone back to Windows 8.0 now, I was getting BSODs in 8.1 too, so I wanted rid of it as its clearly buggy.

I'll reinstall in in a few months when VB works with it.

ta

Windows 8.1 with bridged networking works fine as a guest for me, but it was a fresh install, not an upgrade.

There have been a few posts about problems with bridged networking when upgrading to 4.3 .

Yeah I'm definitely gonna hold out for a few months until its fixed... and 8.1 is a bit more stable. I've been lucky not to see a BSOD for many years now, so seeing a BSOD on day one of using 8.1 did not feel me with confidence