Some additional information might help us help you get to the bottom of this.
Which system is having trouble connecting? The Mac? The VM? It appears that you're talking about the Mac, but need to make sure.
What do you mean by "VM taking over the network".A VM should not "take over the network" - it runs with a virtual network adapter in bridged mode (where it shares the connection - subnet and all - with the host Mac), NAT mode (where a local DHCP server provided by Fusion takes care of the VM's address, and non-local connections are routed via NAT to the Mac's IP address), or host-only (no external Mac network connectivity) depending on how you have the virtual NIC configured. You said that the client was an XP pro laptop, so it should not be serving as a DHCP server.
If the Mac was working before, Fusion shouldn't break the Mac networking - it doesn't change your Mac's network connection properties. From the Mac's side, what were the networking configurations when it worked and what they are now? How was the VM and the XP's network configured both before and after?
What do you mean by "bogus IP address". What are you seeing and what do you expect to see? An output of a "ipconfig" from the XP VM, and a
"ifconfig -a" on the Mac would be helpful here in addition to details on how the Mac's networking adapters are configured. Also some information about the DHCP configuration from your router would be useful - it will tell us what subnet and what ranges of addresses it's handing out and what systems have been handed an IP address.
- Paul (Technogeezer)
Editor of the Unofficial Fusion Companion Guides
