Networking with VPC 6.1

R

Richman67

Registered
Hi Guys,

Got a toughie here:

I have a Al PB 12" with an airport extreme card. It is networked wirelessly with a Linksys "G" router to my homebrew XP box. I have everything on the Mac side networked to the XP side nicely. I can share files, printers and the internet via the router (and my DSL) to both the PB and the XP box just fine.

The problem now is with Virtual PC. I use VPC for exactly two applications, and only then when I am on the road, but I thought it would be nice that it could be set up on the wireless network with my XP box along to save me a step in moving XP files from the XP home computer to VPC (as opposed to going XP to Mac to Shared folder to VPC).

First I tried using Shared Networking. Well, that sort of worked, I can see the XP box from VPC, and I could print from VPC to the network printer, but couldn't get XP to see the VPC (it only sees the Mac OSX). The Ips and gateway addresses that VPC used bore no relation to what was actually set (under the network properties, which were all set to Auto)

I then tried it with virtual switch and turned on the internet sharing in OS X turned on. Still no luck, and this time, for some reason, Outlook Express stopped seeing the connection (Explorer worked fine). This time, however, VPC was using the OS X as a router, and the Gateway addy was 192.168.2.1 (and the IP was 192.168.2.2), whereas the gateway of the Linksys router was 192.168.1.1. But I had the same results. I could not get the XP box to see VPC at all.

I also tried the above with "Shared Sockets" with the same results, except that Outlook Express started working again.

Normally I have the firewall turned on on the Mac and Zone Alarm on the XP box. Zone Alarm is setup to allow local traffic from the router. In the interest of experiementing, I turned ZA off completely, with the same results. Maybe I'll try turning off the Mac firewall.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks,
Richard
 
Richard said:
Maybe I'll try turning off the Mac firewall.
Click to expand...

Did you try this?
Are you sharing any files on your VPC WinXP? I would use the option sharing the mac network settings. Now you have to check everything step by step. Does ping work? Are the VPC-WinXP and the real WinXP in the same workgroup? Same subnet? Did you give the VPC-WinXP a unique network alias? If so, does WinXP (real) find the name when you use search the network?
This is working just fine here. That's why I believe there must be something wrong with your settings..
 
Zammy-Sam said:
Did you try this?
Are you sharing any files on your VPC WinXP? I would use the option sharing the mac network settings. Now you have to check everything step by step. Does ping work? Are the VPC-WinXP and the real WinXP in the same workgroup? Same subnet? Did you give the VPC-WinXP a unique network alias? If so, does WinXP (real) find the name when you use search the network?
This is working just fine here. That's why I believe there must be something wrong with your settings..
Click to expand...

Hiya Zammy,

I futzed around with it, and wound up scrounging up a ethernet cable to do a hard wire troubleshoot. When hardwired to the router, everything worked fine and showed up where it was supposed to: XP-VPC, VPC-XP, Mac in between, internet and printer sharing, all worked great.

So I really began scratching my head over it. Double and triple checked that my settings were right...then bingo...turns out that VPC has TWO sets of settings. One for the specific virtual machine you are running, and another for VPC in general (under preferences). I needed to set the preferences menu to point virtual switch to the airport, and not the built in ethernet. Simple as that. Mystery solved...

Everything works great now with the airport card. Pretty cool stuff...I just wish VPC was faster with XP. I don't use anthing that needs XP...I might try Win 98 or ME.

Thanks again,
Rich
 
hey Rich,

happy you fixed it. Anyway, you should search for VPC in this forum. We had many threads on how to speed up WinXP on VPC. One very obvious thing was to run WinXP on lowest graphical effect. It was a very good boost for me. And make sure you got enough ram dedicated for VPC
 
Zammy-Sam said:
hey Rich,

happy you fixed it. Anyway, you should search for VPC in this forum. We had many threads on how to speed up WinXP on VPC. One very obvious thing was to run WinXP on lowest graphical effect. It was a very good boost for me. And make sure you got enough ram dedicated for VPC
Click to expand...

Hi Zammy,

Yup..I've got XP on my home box, and I've tweeked VPC as much as possible. I've got 512MB dedicated to VPC (out of 768 total on the PB) and I have turned down (or off) all of the fluff. One huge thing was ZoneAlarm and Norton. I used the XP task manager to identify the drag on resources, and ZA was a HUGE culprit. I then turned Norton off except for the AV stuff.

Now it runs acceptably, but if I can load up a Win 98 or Win ME and have it run faster, so much the better, cause nothing I use requires XP.

Thanks again,
Rich
 
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