virtualbox.org

Hi all, I've seen similar things posted but they're more in-depth and slightly tangential to my problem, from what I can see.

Office is asking to be activated by connecting to my corporate network (it's a legit corporate install, just in an XP vm). It doesn't seem to do it automatically while I'm on the network (with xubuntu host) so I guess the guest is getting some kind of proxy internet, maybe a LAN from the host or something?

Does anyone know of a way around this?

Thanks

If you use NAT then you should be using the same network API as your host... but a business license server might get confused as to why you aren't activated already.

You should really ask your IT people how to connect your VM to the corporate network.

Thanks dude. So I guess I need to find out if I use NAT. I have internet connection on the guest - is it possible that I'm NOT using NAT?

Network Adapter 1: PCnet-FAST III (NAT)

Says attached, deny promiscuous, cable attached, no port forwarding setup. Does that sounds like everything's setup correctly in internet terms? Or can I tweak something on the virtualbox side do you think?

Thanks

NAT is the easiest to get working, which is why it's the default. It means that you use the host's internet: so if your host has a working internet, the guest usually does too.

What VirtualBox version are you using? Windows 10 is still not officially supported, but a number of bugs have been fixed recently.

Does an Internet browser work in the guest?

Sorry, poor of me. 4.3.26 ubuntu 98988 host, winXP guest. Internet works fine on the guest, and it looks like I'm using NAT, especially if it's the default.

Peculiar, then, that office doesn't recognise it's on the network... it feels like it MUST be due to the way that the linux host passes the connection to the xp guest... e.g. linux host connecting to corporate network directly through ethernet port/card, but guest connecting through ad hoc network setup by the host? I'm guessing here. If this is true, do we know if it's possible to connect the guest directly to the ethernet port? Would that screw up internet for the host?

Thanks for your help / ideas.

Not all that peculiar. The server at my work keeps track of licenses and versions on a PC by PC basis, which it needs to do in order to push updates etc. Basic internet browsing should work fine, but problems with local Office activation doesn't surprise me.

As I said, you should contact your local IT support people, since this is not really a VirtualBox issue. The same thing would arise e.g. if you had a physical tablet sharing a local switch.

Ok, will do (or rather, have done but haven't heard back). Thanks for your help.