Hyper V Windows XP VM - Beginner

GerBear69 · May 5, 2022

jimbo45 said:
Hi there
can you display the IP addresses of the Host and Guest -- in command mode in each machine type ipconfig.

Then on each machine you should basically see two IP adresses - one for each interface
e.g on my HOST here there's the one eno2 which is the physical one that the HOST accesses the Internet and is acessible to other machines on the LAN -- 192.168.1.56 and the Virtual NAT one 192.168.254.1 which is the IP address that the GUEST uses to access the Host.

View attachment 28392

Now on the Guest : it's 192.168.1.164 which is the address this VM is known to other machines on the LAN and it's Virtual NAT of 192.168.254.176.

so on the Guest if I ping the Host at 192.168.254.1 i should see a response from the Host

View attachment 28391

and the other way : On the Host if I ping 192.168.254.176 the guest should send this response:

View attachment 28394

Then on your say W11 machine try in your folder to map to \\Ipaddress using the appropriate subnets - this will depend on your network but post the IP addresses as I've done.

Enabling SMB1 is fine while you are testing. Ensure also firewall allows inbound / outbound traffic and "allow remote connections to this machine are enabled in Windows and uncheck the box only allow "secure" connections or whatever in the box under allow remote connections ,

Enable also on the XP machine slightly different panel but it's in control panel ->system>remote

View attachment 28395

Then you should be able to connect a network drive

From GUEST to see Host :

View attachment 28396

Similarly from Host to Guest (not logged on to W11 currently so can't screenshot but it DOES work !!!!

The trick is to find the two NAT addresses as I've tried to show in the examples. Post your's and it should be "Sortable out" - I don't think there should be any inherent difficulty in Host / Guest communication in HYPER-V assuming the network has been set up correctly.

While testing also on a LAN at home I'd switch firewall off completely on both Guest and Host -- don't add extra complications into networking - once the basic flow works then you can adjust security as required. Windows Networking often to me seems to need more magic than "Gandalf the Wizard" has to get it working. !!!

Cheers
jimbo

Thanks for the help I was able to map the SharedDocs folder of the Guest XP machine to the Host Machine. It wasn't showing up on my network until I had a successful ping which I thought was weird. My network wouldn't recognize it until then even without making any IP changes.

Now the fun part, moving over and installing the legacy software.

GerBear69 · May 5, 2022

Bree said:
Generally the Host machine should be able to see shares on the guest VM (and vice versa) using the Default Switch. For access to and from other PCs on the network you need to use a Virtual Switch.

In practice I find accessing network shares from the XP VM to be problematic. I find it simplest/easiest to access a share on the XP VM from the Host machine (XP is sharing C:\Temp in this example). Make sure the XP machine is in the same Workgroup (mine is named Home).

View attachment 28398

Thanks for the help! For some reason my network wasn't recognizing my Guest VM. At some point it appeared in the network as all your machines do. I was then able to map the SharedDocs folder!

jimbo45 · May 5, 2022

Glad all sorted

@GerBear69

Don't forget also when installing legacy software you can sometimes "redirect" USB devices dynamically while the VM is running (detach from Host, attach to Guest) or in the VM config itself include the USB physical hardware itself. For specific drivers if you have them on an ISO simply have that iso also in the VM's config. If you have the USB in the VM's config then it's unavailable to the HOST until you power off the VM - I only use that method if the USB redirect for some reason doesn't work.

for example on my W11 system I have the Virtio (windows Virtio drivers -- equivalent to "Guest additions or Vmware tools") and a video camera with microphone. The virtio driver cd is on one of the attached cdrom iso's as an iso image.

If issue is fixed please mark as solved !!!. Helps loads in the Forums.

Not sure of the Windows command to show all the usb devices on the host device (I'm not a Windows Guru) but there must be a command equivalent to this

if lsusb command not found on your distro install package usbutils ( or equivalent) You don't need root or sudo to run it. XP doesn't support USB3 so I wouldn't even bother to think of trying it. USB2 works perfectly OK though so you can attach USB3 / USB 3.1 or even USBC devices so long as they are backward compatible with USB2.

Mice and wireless keyboards don't (usually) need to be specifically routed to the VM - that's all handled in the VM software (Host) but if you want additional keyboards / mice there's no reason why you can't attach those specifically to the VM.

Anyway I can't contribute anything more to this thread as it looks like you're well on your way to achieving your desired solution.

Cheers
jimbo