Win7: No longer able to port forward with NAT

[wirespring]

Hi all,

I've been using VirtualBox on my 64-bit Windows 7 Pro machine for years now and have never run into a problem like this -- I'm no longer able to do any port forwarding from the host to the guest. Typically I forward port 2222 on the host to 22 on the guest so that I can ssh in without having to bridge (as a nice side-effect this also lets my guests see the host's VPN connections). Today, though, I started it up and was unable to get it to work.

The linux guest gets a NAT IP address and can make remote connections to the Internet, and netstat -an shows that it is listening on port 22 (and I can ssh localhost on the guest and get a ssh login prompt).

On the host, I've disabled the firewall completely, started virtualbox as administrator (and launched the guest from an admin CLI prompt), tried different ports for both the forwarding port and the ssh listening port, and of course rebooted everything a number of times. The only thing I can think of at this point is that some windows update slipped in and broke everything, or something happened to the virtual network adapters. I'm not really sure how to go about identifying/fixing either of those.

Here is the VM info. Any suggestions would be greatly welcome at this point!

C:\Windows\system32>"e:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\VBoxManage.exe" startvm "Linux OS1"
Waiting for VM "Linux OS1" to power on...
VM "Linux OS1" has been successfully started.

C:\Windows\system32>"e:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\VBoxManage.exe" showvminfo "Linux OS1"
Name: Linux OS1
Groups: /New group
Guest OS: Other Linux (32-bit)
UUID: c135816a-aaee-40b8-b098-5dd214fc6934
Config file: E:\Users\bill\VMs\New group\Linux OS1\Linux OS1.vbox
Snapshot folder: E:\Users\bill\VMs\New group\Linux OS1\Snapshots
Log folder: E:\Users\bill\VMs\New group\Linux OS1\Logs
Hardware UUID: xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx
Memory size: 2048MB
Page Fusion: off
VRAM size: 32MB
CPU exec cap: 100%
HPET: off
Chipset: ich9
Firmware: BIOS
Number of CPUs: 1
PAE: on
Long Mode: off
CPUID Portability Level: 0
CPUID overrides: None
Boot menu mode: message and menu
Boot Device (1): Floppy
Boot Device (2): DVD
Boot Device (3): HardDisk
Boot Device (4): Not Assigned
ACPI: on
IOAPIC: on
Time offset: 0ms
RTC: UTC
Hardw. virt.ext: on
Nested Paging: on
Large Pages: on
VT-x VPID: on
VT-x unr. exec.: on
Paravirt. Provider: Legacy
State: running (since 2016-02-02T16:25:58.653000000)
Monitor count: 1
3D Acceleration: on
2D Video Acceleration: off
Teleporter Enabled: off
Teleporter Port: 0
Teleporter Address:
Teleporter Password:
Tracing Enabled: off
Allow Tracing to Access VM: off
Tracing Configuration:
Autostart Enabled: off
Autostart Delay: 0
Default Frontend:
Storage Controller Name (0): IDE
Storage Controller Type (0): ICH6
Storage Controller Instance Number (0): 0
Storage Controller Max Port Count (0): 2
Storage Controller Port Count (0): 2
Storage Controller Bootable (0): on
IDE (0, 0): E:\Users\bill\VMs\New group\Linux OS1\Linux OS1.vdi (UUID: 87501a87-2309-4
-aa85-91b1fd8323d1)
IDE (1, 0): Empty
NIC 1: MAC: 080027D789AD, Attachment: NAT, Cable connected: on, Trace: off (file: none), Type: Am79C970A, R
rted speed: 0 Mbps, Boot priority: 0, Promisc Policy: deny, Bandwidth group: none
NIC 1 Settings: MTU: 0, Socket (send: 64, receive: 64), TCP Window (send:64, receive: 64)
NIC 1 Rule(0): name = Rule 1, protocol = tcp, host ip = , host port = 1234, guest ip = , guest port = 22
NIC 2: disabled
NIC 3: disabled
NIC 4: disabled
NIC 5: disabled
NIC 6: disabled
NIC 7: disabled
NIC 8: disabled
NIC 9: disabled
NIC 10: disabled
NIC 11: disabled
NIC 12: disabled
NIC 13: disabled
NIC 14: disabled
NIC 15: disabled
NIC 16: disabled
NIC 17: disabled
NIC 18: disabled
NIC 19: disabled
NIC 20: disabled
NIC 21: disabled
NIC 22: disabled
NIC 23: disabled
NIC 24: disabled
NIC 25: disabled
NIC 26: disabled
NIC 27: disabled
NIC 28: disabled
NIC 29: disabled
NIC 30: disabled
NIC 31: disabled
NIC 32: disabled
NIC 33: disabled
NIC 34: disabled
NIC 35: disabled
NIC 36: disabled
Pointing Device: USB Tablet
Keyboard Device: PS/2 Keyboard
UART 1: disabled
UART 2: disabled
LPT 1: disabled
LPT 2: disabled
Audio: enabled (Driver: DSOUND, Controller: AC97, Codec: STAC9700)
Clipboard Mode: disabled
Drag and drop Mode: disabled
Session name: GUI/Qt
Video mode: 720x400x0 at 0,0 enabled
VRDE: disabled
USB: enabled
EHCI: disabled
XHCI: disabled

USB Device Filters:

<none>

Available remote USB devices:

<none>

Currently Attached USB Devices:

<none>

Bandwidth groups: <none>

Shared folders: <none>

VRDE Connection: not active
Clients so far: 0

Video capturing: not active
Capture screens: 0
Capture file: E:\Users\bill\VMs\New group\Linux OS1\Linux OS1.webm
Capture dimensions: 1024x768
Capture rate: 512 kbps
Capture FPS: 25

Guest:

Configured memory balloon size: 0 MB
OS type: Linux
Additions run level: 0

Guest Facilities:

No active facilities.

[wirespring]

Self-reply should this happen to anyone else.

In my case the issue seemed to have to do with the virtual network device driver and the TAP driver for OpenVPN (which I also use). I completely uninstalled virtualbox, manually removed all VBox* files from /windows/system32/drivers , uninstalled all of my TAP adapters, reinstalled virtualbox and then reinstalled the TAP adapters. And voila! It works again. I'd love to know why it stopped in the first place, but a solution is sufficient for now.