Trouble configuring shared printer on XP guest

[doncell6]

Running Virtualbox on Windows 7 pro.

The host is Windows 7. The guest is Windows XP pro.
The Win7 pc is a member of a peer to peer network.

There is a printer connected to the Windows 7 host. It is an HP C5200 connected as a usb printer.
I have installed the guest extension pack.

The PROBLEM:
The guest XP refuses to connect to the shared printer.

What I have done so far:
- Shared the printer on the Win 7 host. The printer is an HP C5200
- Installed the basic C5200 printer driver on the XP guest.

In the XP guest I click on Start > Printers and faxes. > Add network printer.
When I browse for printer, the guest searches and finds nothing.

The ip address of the host is 192.168.0.11. If I manually type in \\192.168.0.11\ and press enter, the shared printer is filled in. But I cannot print anything. No dialog box appears to allow me to print.

I tried setting the Virtualbox networking from NAT to Bridged. When I rebooted the guest, it had no internet access. The ip address of the guest was 169.0.0.0. No good. I changed back to NAT and the guest can access the internet.

My guess is I somehow have to get bridged networking to work.

What am I missing? How do I solve this?

[BillG]

You can only use bridged networking if you are on a local network which has Internet access (and preferably a DHCP server so that the vm gets its IP automatically from it). If there is no DHCP server available you need to configure the guest manually. (A 169. IP suggests it can't see a DHCP server).

Do an ipconfig of the host machine to see its full network config and set up the guest exactly the same way (except for the IP address). If you can't work it out, post the ipconfig output here.

[doncell6]

As I was thinking about this problem today I suspected the bridge mode required a DHCP server to be present on the network somewhere.

If I understand correctly, :
- Set the guest in bridge mode
- Examine the host ip address configuration .
- In the guest, manually set the ip address so it does not conflict with any of the pc's on the network.
- Set the DNS server so it is the same as is on the host pc.

Please tell me if any of the above is incorrect.
I'll try this as soon as possible and report my results.

[socratis]

• The Bridged mode does not require a DHCP server, like any other network mode, or any network for that matter. Having a DHCP server simply makes it easier to avoid conflicts and to keep track of who is who.
• If you have a DHCP server you do not have to set IP address, network mask, gateway and DNS server. If you don't have a DHCP server, I'm afraid you do.
• Where does the host get its IP address from? Do you set that manually? If not, that means that you already have a DHCP server, so leave the guest alone to negotiate the parameter with the server, instead of going there and setting things manually.