How to - XP Pro in VB connect to Internet

[Mizzy]

Virtual Box 4.3.28 installed on MacBook Pro Yosemite 10.10.3

Advice appreciated on how to make XP Pro SP 3 on Virtual Box connect to internet.

[Perryg]

Moving to Windows guest

[mpack]

It shouldn't be hard - just choose NAT networking in the VM settings, and don't mess with any of the network configuration stuff in the guest. Oh, and download a modern browser to install in the guest - e.g. Firefox.

[Mizzy]

Thanks very much for response. I have in V Box Machines>Settings>Network, for Adapter 1 -

Attached to - NAT
Name - ghosted, no entry
Adapter Type - ghosted but contains "Intel PRO/1000NT Desktop (8254EM)" , not editable
Promiscuous Mode - ghosted but contains "Deny"
MAC Address - 08002741935B
Cable Connected - checked

No Internet icon is in the row of icons at screen bottom right. There is a double screen (2 squares displaced )icon there. Clicking this brings up a little menu NETWORK SETTINGS and CONNECT NETWORK ADAPTER. The latter is checked.

I suspect there is something that needs to be done within XP to connect to internet.

Have you any advice?

[scottgus1]

The "Intel PRO/1000NT Desktop (8254EM)" part may be your problem. Shut down the guest so the "ghosted" boxes become "unghosted". Then switch the network adapter type to "PC-Net FastIII". That is one of the adapters XP has drivers for built-in. My XP guests also have built-in drivers for the
Intel Pro/1000 T Server" card. Reboot the guest. You should see a New Hardware Found balloon and the drivers getting installed, maybe need a reboot to complete. Then you should get a network connection and Internet.

XP doesn't have built-in drivers for the Pro/1000 MT Desktop card. You can download them from Intel, and then use Virtualbox Guest Additions shared folders to get the drivers into the guest, then you can use that card. The PC-Net FastIII card will only appear as a 100mbit card in the guest, but the forum scuttlebutt is that the virtual card runs at the speed of the host's physical card, regardless of whether the virtual card is 10mbit, 100mbit or 1Gbit.

[mpack]

The PC-Net FastIII card will only appear as a 100mbit card in the guest, but the forum scuttlebutt is that the virtual card runs at the speed of the host's physical card, regardless of whether the virtual card is 10mbit, 100mbit or 1Gbit.

Yes. It's almost (*) entirely pointless to install a non-default network card driver in the guest, since it won't help performance one iota. VirtualBox never throttles down the network speed to suit the simulation, and at the other end you obviously you can't go faster than the physical hardware allows.

Stick with the default unless you know better than the expert who chose it.

(*) The only exception is that advanced users may choose to install Virtio-network drivers (XP drivers are available). You must also select VirtIO in the VM settings. This allows the guest OS to bypass the virtualization overhead it would have with any standard NIC... but you still are using the host NIC for actual comms, so max speed will still be determined by the host network card.