virtualbox.org

First I am a real novice to Virtualbox. I don't even know if this is possible.
I have an expensive plotter on my host network that doesn't have a driver for windows 10 which my new machine runs on. I have set up an XP virtual machine on virtualbox and would like to setup the plotter on the guest(XP) and have it print to the plotter on the local network attached to my windows 10 machine. Ultimately I would like to work on the window 10 machine and send plots to the plotter "located" (with XP driver) on the guest(XP). Right now I can't get the windows 10 and theXP virtual machine's 2 networks to communicate.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

There are several possible problems.

1. How are you going to attach a physical device (the printer plotter) to a virtual machine?

2. How have you configured the network in the vm? I would use bridged networking for file sharing. The host and guest then work just like two physical machines on the same network.

3. Windows XP cannot communicate with current versions of Windows 10 by default. XP uses the obsolete SMB1 which has security problems and is disabled by default in Windows 10. It can be enabled manually if you accept this risk.

4. You may also need to enable Netbios over TCP/IP on the Windows 10 NIC.

Networking between XP and Windows 10 will work. With SMB1 enabled, Windows 10 is backward compatible with the old NT-style file sharing used by XP.
Printer sharing won't work without a driver but copying files from host and guest then printing them should work.( To print directly from Windows 10 to a printer on XP, the print image is prepared on Windows 10 then sent through the network to the printer, so Windows 10 needs a driver for the printer).