virtualbox.org

Have a linux mint 16 64bit host with xp and now 8.1 64bit guests. Require a com1 serial port and it works fine with xp. However with seemingly the identical settings in 8.1 enabled, the 8.1 guest will not open. It will only open if I disable the com1 setting. Have included serial ports setting page (identical in both xp and 8.1), the uart 1 setting from vboxmanage showvminfo for 8.1 and the error message which appears when I attempt to open 8.1 guest with the com port enabled. Many thanks for any help.

Check Linux hosts permissions and make sure you are in the proper group to allow serial use.

Had a look Perry and I don't see anything amiss. I am a member of the Dialout group and also the vboxttys0 groups. It all works fine already in the win xp guest. Its just the new windows8.1 guest, which is in not starting up with ttys0 enabled. Might I need to do some sort of modification within the guest first to recognize the com port?

Unfortunately I can't help much further. I don't have serial ports on my production machine and no windows 8.* on my dev machines.
So someone else will need to take over.

Note: I will see about installing win 8.1 this week end on a devel machine but hopefully someone else will take care of this in case I don't get to it.

Well don't I feel the dummy! Just compared my xp and 8.1 setup details to the letter and discovered, that I had entered /dev/ttyS0 as /dev/ttys0 in the new 8.1 guest. It starts up fine now. I'll install my Computrainer software in the new installation and give it a try. Many thanks Perry for your time.

I transfered a Win8.1 guest to one of my dev machines that has ttyS0 and it works just fine.

I see you found your mistake, easy one to trip up on, so don't beat yourself up.