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I have a Windows 10 Host with a Virtualbox Windows XP Guest installed which i need to connect to other computers on the network with the same Workgroup. The Host computer running windows 10 works ok but the XP guest can only see itself. I am using a bridged connection and I can ping all the computers i need to connect to from the XP guest. I have tried building a windows 7 guest aswell and this seems to have the same issue. I am now out of ideas what it could be and how to fix it. Any help would be gratefully received. Thank you.

This most probably has nothing to do with VirtualBox, and everything to do with the SMB protocol used between Win computers to talk to each other. You would have faced the exact same situation if you weren't dealing with VMs, but with real computers.

Search the webs for "Windows 10 SMB1" on how to enable the older protocol for your Windows 10 computer. Also make sure that the firewall is not blocking the SMB traffic.

You may also need to enable Netbios over TCP/IP on the Windows 10 machine as well as SMB1.

Windows 7 should work OK with Windows 10. The later versions of Windows 10 come with SMB1 disabled by default, which prevents them from seeing WinXP and older (and some Samba NAS devices). Vista and later use the same discovery method as Windows 10 and do not need SMB1 to network with Windows 10.

BillG wrote:You may also need to enable Netbios over TCP/IP on the Windows 10 machine

You got me stumped with this one! I never thought about it. Turns out, that it's... random when it's enabled or not (well there are rules, good hunting), so you might as well enable it from the get-go. And I really had to go hunting where that setting is:

• Network and Sharing Center » select the Adapter that you want to change » Properties » IPv4 (TCP/IPv4) » Properties » Advanced... » WINS » Enable NetBIOS over TCP/IP.

Phew...