Virtual PC 7 - How to network?

MDLarson

MDLarson

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Argh... must... uninstall Windows from my Mac... *slaps hand away from mouse*

OK.. here's the deal: Got a new G5. (yay!) Got MS Office 2004 Professional which includes Virtual PC 7.

I can't get Windows XP Pro to network at all. It looks like SP2 is installed and may be rearing it's ugly head. I tried turning off the Windows Firewall, but I still can't get an IP address from our DHCP server (XP gives me the default 192.168.x.x address).

Virtual PC is set to Shared Networking.

Do I need Windows Firewall enabled in VPC or can Mac OS X's firewall suffice? The greater question is how to get XP to network...
 
If you're hooked up to a router, try "Virtual Switch" instead of shared networking. Your router should hand the VPC machine another IP address just as it did your Mac.
 
Virtual Switch only works if you've got a router or server that can assign another IP address separate from the one already assigned to the Macintosh... for situations like dial-up, you're only assigned one IP address, so Virtual Switch wouldn't work, since VPC would be trying to get another IP address from your ISP (which they won't give in a dial-up situation).

Shared Networking worked for me on dial-up, but I haven't tried it since moving to broadband and a router. Basically, Virtual Switch is like VPC acting as a completely separate computer on the network. Shared Networking tries to use the IP of the Macintosh...

Still, either way should work in your situation -- I don't know why Shared Networking doesn't work...
 
Actually I'd love to make Shared Networking work - because when the Virtual Switch gives an IP to the Windows client, it usually loses it the next time I start up. Repairing the network connection fails to get a new IP, so I have to restart Windows anyway. If I get it to work I'll post back. Kinda strange.
 
I think I uncovered the problem - according to this Microsoft technote, one cannot both A) join a Windows Domain and B) use Shared Networking, which I am trying to do. :(

The technote does not list Virtual PC 7 specifically (it lists 5.0 through 6.1), but it doesn't look like the problem was fixed in version 7.

One of the 2 workarounds is to enable root access on my Mac... but I don't think I'm going to do that.
 
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