Saying you are running the latest version etc is somewhat meaningless when trying to troubleshoot issues and as such you should always provide explicit and specific information whenever possible so have a look at HOWTO: Ask (and Answer) Questions as a guideline.

You said "I have tried to just send a ctrl+alt+del to the virtual XP box but that does not work." so why are you trying to send CAD to the VM, which by the way can be done from the Virtual Machine menu? Why not just click Start > Turn Off Computer (or Shut Down if applicable) > Restart? Or are you? It's not clear from what you said other then you're restarting the Host (assuming that what you mean by "re-start the whole system".

In addition to omitted version specific info what type of Mac is this and how is the Mac connected to the Internet and if Wired vs WiFi or visa versa have you tried switching and see if this makes any difference and in that same respect how is the Network on the Virtual Machine configured, the default NAT or custom set to Bridged and have you tried switching that as well?

Is the Host or Guest hibernating or sleeping prior to loss of network connectivity in the Guest? If yes have you tried disabling hibernating or sleeping on either/both to see if that makes any difference?

Hi Woody,

Thanks for the reply. Further, thanks for the link to "HOWTO."

I am sending the CAD from the VM menu. I have also powered off and restarted the machine from the start menu. No matter which way I shut down or restart the VM network connectivity is not restored until after I restart the host.

2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo iMac (aluminum) connected wirelessly via an "airport express." I have switched between/used both default NAT and custom set to Bridged, but the problem persists.

Only my monitors sleep/hibernate on the host. The guest however does hibernate. I will try to disable to see if this helps. Nevertheless, it is quite annoying.

WoodyZ,

The boot.sh --restart tip you gave worked for me. I'll keep monitoring it and let you know if this command continues to prove effective (or not).

Thanks!

If anyone who sees this behavior knows how to take packet traces, it would probably be helpful to track this down. Not being able to observe it ourselves makes it hard to diagnose or fix.

Here is another interesting piece to the puzzle. I have not shut down or re-started the host for 3 days now (typical for me). However, I have been running the guest in "unity" mode and did not lose network connectivity once during the past three days.

Just recently, I exited "unity" mode and again had the same issue of network connectivity loss after 2 hours. Instead of opening terminal, I went back to running in "unity" mode in hopes it would fix the issue, but network connectivity did not return. I am not sure if this helps, but thought that I would share nonetheless.

Another interesting note - while in unity mode I can copy and paste freely between Win and Mac applications using cmd+c and cmd+v. However, once I exit unity I lose copy and paste functionality between the guest and host and have to use ctrl+c and ctrl+v to copy and paste within the Win environment. One thing that is never lost is the ability to drag and drop files between host and guest.

I am totally open to doing packet traces, however I would not know where to start. If you could provide a link to a tutorial or instructions on this - I would gladly perform a packet trace and post the results.

Cheers,
Spicoli

I would like to add that I am also seeing the timeout after 2 hours (approx). The same work around, shutdown running boot.sh and restart, works for me as well