I had a helluva time figuring this out, and the documentation is limited. This is for XP in particular, but I'm sure it's pretty universal with Vista if you take into consideration the obvious differences in OS interfaces. VirtualBox being Sun's OS emulation software for Ubuntu 9.04.
Once you've loaded your XP OS into VirtualBox... you'll need to "Install Guest Permissions" to activate the video drivers and take advantage of the on-the-fly window resizing that updates the resolution, as opposed to a fixed window size.
1. Start your installed XP OS from VirtualBox, and then in the top menu, after the system is idle, choose: Devices > Install Guest Permissions.
2. Exit out, and actually shut down the OS within the emulator, and not freezing it for later.
3. Within the main window, choose File > Virtual Media Manager.
4. Go to the CD/DVD Images section, and you'll see "VBoxGuestAdditions.iso". It should be over 25MB. If it's less, it's corrupt. If it's less than 1MB, click it, and choose Remove. And then start back at #1.
5. If #4 worked, then you'll need to go back to the Hard Disks tab. And choose Add, and then choose the actual file you just created by successfully adding permissions. Find it here when it asks you: usr\share\virtualbox\VBoxGuestAdditions.iso". You could also just load the ISO from the CD/DVD menu.
So now you've initiated the drivers for file sharing and video drivers. If you've noticed nothing has changed that's because you've got to answer the submission from within XP.
1. Start XP via VirtualBox.
2. Right-click the desktop, choose Shortcut.
3. Go to Network Neighborhood, and choose, View Entire Network.
4. You should see a Vbox drive automatically, if not, expand a few connections. Select it, and hit OK.
5. Activate this new shortcut on your desktop that you just created.
5. Within this network shortcut, you'll find some drivers. Activate the 32-bit, or 64-bit, depending on your setup. This will initiate sharing and your video card. I can't remember if you have to Restart.
6. From this point, you can go back to the main settings window in VirtualBox.
7. Select your OS, and then click the Settings button.
8. Set up your share folder, pretty intuitive here.
9. Start your OS.
10. Within XP, right-click your desktop and create a shortcut, view entire network and you should find your share folder, and then you can map it to a drive if you choose to.
Update: 6/12/09:
- Installing Guest Permissions on a Virtual Ubuntu is easy, as once you install it, it appears as a mounted drive.
Good luck!
Category: Computers & Internet - Linux & Open Source
Tuesday June 2nd, 2009
Comments
My post was for installing Vbox on Ubuntu/Linux. Although, I'm guessing it should hold true to your Win7. Speaking in theory here... can you access VirtualBox as an application? Also are you using the free Open Source version? See link, as I'm not sure if the OSE is available for non-Linux (although the versions shouldn't matter):
http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads
You'll be running Vbox on Win7, with an XP install (on Vbox). So you'll need to install Vbox as an actual app on Win7, and then reinstall XP on Vbox within Win7. From that point, after install, you'd just access the communication between the 2 via the booted drive called Vbox. That booted drive will have the drivers necessary for basic drivers (video, sharing, etc.) After which, you should even have a DirectX emulator, booted as well called Wine3D. Wine3D will need to be installed from Safe Mode.
From that point Vbox allows you to set up your USB connections, share folders, bootable devices, etc.
After all that, and successfully configuring XP within Win7... you may want to only run Win7, and rid of the dual boot. I'd love to run a 64-bit of Win7 by itself. As soon as I download the huge Win7 ISO, I'll install it on Linux as well.
Lastly, you may want to attempt to Google a 3rd party app or a workaround to use your Canoscan scanner minus the driver. For instance, sometimes in OSX or Linux you can use a generic driver... although that's up for debate, because it may lack certain features.