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dporton
Contributor
Contributor

VM XP Networked External Drive Issue

My  experiencewith VMware is limited and I was learning it on the go earlier yesterday. A  client has a problem where her new laptop (host is Win7) is running a  guest VM Win XP with VM Player in order to use legacy programs (i.e.  AutoCad), but the VM could not recognize a networked external drive.The external drive is connected to another computer (have to check but probably via USB) which is running XP. Other computers on the network see the drive just fine and the client is able to modify and save files. I was able  to add a path to the external drive on the virtual XP through the VM Shared Folders settings so that it was recognized and I was  able to open files. This created a folder linked to the external drive. Unfortunately, I could not save or  modify files.

I unchecked the  "Read-only" box in the external drive folder preferences in virtual XP as a  possible solution but because it's through a VM and because there are so  many files to apply the setting to, the propagation took all night.

This had no effect on the VM as the client still cannot save files on  the networked external drive. Do you have any suggestions?? My other  idea was to allow the admin full control under the  security tab, but as I understand this may not actually fix the problem  since the client may not be logging in as Admin and it may not have any  effect on the VM.

I have yet to check if the host Win 7 sees the the networked external drive, but even if it does I know this problem will still persist because I was able to recreate it on my own desktop using VMlite. That is, I am not able to see the host drives on my desktop nor the drives on another networked PC.

Thank you for the help in advance. The sooner I find a solution to this issue the better because the client needs this laptop for work. My last resort is to reformat the HDD and install Win XP just so there won't be issues but it kind of defeats the purpose of buying a new computer. The other option, if the host Win 7 see the networked external, is to try running the old AutoCad in Windows XP legacy mode.

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mreed9
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

As long as the xp guest can access the network you should be able to map the networked drive within the xp guest just like all the other physical machines on the network.

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dporton
Contributor
Contributor

Well that's the thing -- the guest OS (Win XP) does not have true access to the network, even though the internet runs OK, because before I specified a path to the external drive it could not see anything in the external drive. I did not technically map the external drive to the virtual XP. I just made the external drive a shared folder under the Virtual Machine Shared Folder settings... I just added the Z: drive in there. And the client still cannot modify and save those files to the external drive, even though she can browse through the folders.

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mreed9
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Since the folders are being shared from a windows machine there is likely a permissions on the folder and since the folder is being accessed by the vmware software it is probably trying to access the files utilzing the service credentials that it is using to run to application. You may want to try creating a new folder on the share and allow "everyone" full access to the folder to test if you can save and modify files in that folder.

dporton
Contributor
Contributor

Good idea. I'll give it a shot and let you know what happens.

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dporton
Contributor
Contributor

The problem was solved by remapping the external drive do a different drive letter. You cannot map drive letters that are the same letter as the Win7 (Host) machine, as this causes network issues.

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