Hi everyone,

I would like to ask if anyone can please help me with the following problem.

I installed Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 on a windows XP host machine, and I installed windows XP as a virtual guest OS.

I am using a dial up internet connection on the host machine and I want to connect the guest OS to the internet. Can you please walk me through the process ? I have looked in the help file and searched online, but I really need someone to just walk me through it as I cannot seem to get it to work.

I'm using shared internet connection on the guest, when I go to "network connections" in the guest, it says the local area network is connected. Zone alarm on the guest machine seemed to sense some traffic after I selected shared connections in the virtual pc settings tab (the host was already connected to net when I switched the guest to shared connections), but when I try to surf with Internet explorer on the guest, it just says "cannot find server or dns error" and the page will not load. If I try to update AVG anti-virus on the guest is says " server cannot be converted to the IP address". When I try to send a test email on the guest with outlook express, it says "cannot find email host".

I would appreciate any help or advice you can offer.

Thanks
John

Hi everyone,

My internet connection just "started working" on the guest PC and I'm not even sure why. It seems that if I am already connected to the internet on the host machine before I start virtual PC, then I can connect to the net via the guest machine. However, if virtual pc is already running before I connect to the net on the host machine, then the guest machine will not connect to the net.

I have the free Vmware player on my host computer, and the free Vmware "converter" software. At first, I thought there might be some sort of conflict between virtual PC and Vmware. However, there seems to be no conflict.

My main concern now is that I have the networking set up to be secure. I don't want to compromise the security of my host system due to my networking setup between the host and the guest OS. Both the host and the guest systems are windows XP and I have anti-virus and ZA firewall on each.

My feeling was that it would be safer to surf online via a virtual machine. I don't want any malware from the virtual machine to be able to infect the host system. I know nothing is 100% effective, but my goal was to make the virtual machine act somewhat like a sandbox to protect the host OS from infection. Another reason I wanted to install virtual PC 2007 was just to play around with the operating system itself and use it as a learning tool. If I screw it up, it won't effect the host system. I can just restore it, or completely delete it
and start over.

I would appreciate it if someone could look over my setup below and let me know if it seems that I have everything set up correctly. Any general advice or advice with respect to security would be appreciated.

Thanks for your help.
John

My current internet / network setup for host and guest:

On the host machine, if I go to control panel, then network connections, I have my regular internet connection icon under dial up, then Under LAN or high speed internet, I have five connection icons
which are...

Vmware virtual earthen network adapter VMnet1
Local area connection 2 (Microsoft loop back adapter)
1394 net adapter connection (says it's connected)
Local Area connection, Nvidia nforce networking controller (says network cable unplugged)
Vmware virtual earthnet Network adapter VMnet8

On the host machine, under properties, advanced, for my regular dial up connection, under "internet connection sharing" I have a check in the box "allow other network users to connect through this computers
internet connection". Under "home networks connection" I have "local area connection 2" selected. I have the box checked for " establish dial up connection whenever a computer on my network attempts to
access the net". I have the box checked for " allow other network users to control or disable the shared internet connection".

In the guest virtual PC, under network connections, there is only one connection icon shown, it says " local area connection, connected". The icon also says " intel 21140- based PCI fast earthnet adapter
(generic).

Once on start up, the guest machine said, "windows system error, a duplicate machine exists on the network". However, it only did this once.