[TC11.03] cannot access shared drive from within VirtualBox VM

[wanderer]

I have a VirtualBox VM with Windows XP. I have a shared virtualbox drive (\\Vboxsvr\z_drive) which i have also mounted as a drive letter. Everything works fine except if i go to TC's command line and execute "\\Vboxsvr\z_drive" (or execute the same command though HotDir menu). This command either freezes TC from a few seconds and then does nothing, or causes TC to close without any error message. Files are normally accessible through the mapped drive letter though. Also, the shared drive is normally accessible from Windows explorer.

Host: Win10, latest version.
Guest: WinXP SP3, latest version.
TC: 11.03 x64.

[ghisler(Author)]

\\Vboxsvr\z_drive launches Explorer. Have you tried
cd \\Vboxsvr\z_drive
instead?

[wanderer]

\\Vboxsvr\z_drive launches Explorer. Have you tried cd \\Vboxsvr\z_drive instead?

Yes, sorry, my mistake. It should have been like this:

if i go to TC's command line and execute "cd \\Vboxsvr\z_drive"

[Flint]

I confirm this. It's not new, though, and not WinXP-specific either. I tried a few other combinations, all the way down to TC 7.04a, and all the way up to Win 11 guest OS, and could not access the shared folder via network address in any of them. The mounted drive letter works fine, though.

Also, I checked Explorer, and it successfully opens the shared folder by its network address. So it's not some system-wide issue. Maybe some difference in how VBox emulates the virtual server for shared folders, that works for Explorer, but throws TC off…

[browny]

or causes TC to close without any error message.

This is a crash. You might try to create a dump file for fixing the bug.

[wanderer]

I tried a few other combinations, all the way down to TC 7.04a,

Wow! Nice work. Thanks for the confirmation.

This is a crash. You might try to create a dump file for fixing the bug.

Well, if it happens again (it happened 2 times consecutively but i couldn't reproduce it after that), i'll try to do as you suggest, provided i get some instructions on how to do it. The crash didn't produce any messages. I haven't checked the Event Viewer though...

[Flint]

BTW, I didn't experience any crashes in my experiments. Forgot to mention, sorry. The network path simply wasn't opened, just TC got frozen for a few seconds, and then unstuck, just like with normal inaccessible network shares.
I'm using VBox 6.1.44 on Win10 host, in case that matters.

[wanderer]

I'm using VBox 6.1.44 on Win10 host, in case that matters.

7.0.14 here, with the same version of guest additions...

[browny]

Creation of a dump file was explained in crash using UNC bug report.

[ghisler(Author)]

I confirm this. It's not new, though, and not WinXP-specific either. I tried a few other combinations, all the way down to TC 7.04a, and all the way up to Win 11 guest OS, and could not access the shared folder via network address in any of them.

This works just fine here, I'm using it all the time. Even accessing my raspberry pi via cd \\ip_address works. I need more information to find out what could be wrong.

[Flint]

2ghisler(Author)
Are you sure we are talking about the same thing? Access to normal network shares works fine, I'm using it too, all the time. The problem happens with one very specific kind of share, and that is when TC is installed inside a VirtualBox virtual machine, and tries to access a virtual network share created by guest tools for accessing host shared folders (which are configured in the virtual machine settings).

[ghisler(Author)]

You mean Virtualbox shared drives? These have never worked for me, so I can't really test them. Just share a folder normally on your host system and then connect to it from your guest.

[Flint]

Shared folder have been working for me perfectly for years, both from Explorer and from TC. Only I don't remember using them via network share name, I've always used the drive letter (Z: by default, but can be changed in the VM settings).
Network share is not always an option, as the VM may not be connected to the network, or you may not want to share the folder for the whole network and bother with authentication. So shared folders are really useful and convenient.

[wanderer]

2Ghisler

What Flint said. In addition, what puzzles me is why does it work from Windows Explorer? There must be something missing from TC. An idea could be for you to contact VBox people, to help you understand what's needed.

[ghisler(Author)]

I have checked it in the debugger now: TC sees "\\Vboxsvr\share\" as a network share and tries to verify the connection, and connect to it if the connection cannot be verified. It first calls WNetGetUser("\\Vboxsvr\share\",UserName,length) to check if the share is valid. This should return error 0, but VirtualBox returns error 2250 (ERROR_NOT_CONNECTED = "This network connection does not exist.").

Then TC calls WNetAddConnection3,which returns error 67 (ERROR_BAD_NET_NAME = "The network name cannot be found.").

So TC assumes that the network path is invalid and doesn't try to access it. The errors don't give any clue that it's not really a network share, and the errors look normal for inaccessible locations too, so I don't really see a solution here.

Btw, you can use a button
cd \\Vboxsvr
to go to the list of shares and then proceed to the share you want to access.