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From the VirtualBox's menu, go to Devices → Shared Folders... to add/remove the folders of the host operating system that you would like to share with the guest operating system (Windows XP, in this example). When done click Ok.

Now we are going to access the folders we added. DO NOT open My Network Places! Instead open a new explorer instance. You can do that by pressing WinKey-E or by executing the explorer command (Start → Run... → type "explorer" → Ok). You should see a windows that looks like this:

windows explorer screenshot



Now, carefully click on the expand icon (expand icon) right next to My Network Places. Make sure you click exactly on the expand icon. If you accidentally clicked on My Network Places, you ruined everything and you will have to go back and start all over again. After expanding the My Network Places branch, you should be able to see Entire Network right underneath:

windows explorer screenshot



Now expand the Entire Network branch, too, and you should be able to see VirtualBox Shared Folders:

windows explorer screenshot



Open VirtualBox Shared Folders. Normally, you should be able to see your shared folders in there.

This entry was posted by giannis on September 28, 2007. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

51 Comments

  1. Dhakir says:

    You're a genius!
    From all WinXP bugs I've seen, this is one of the weirdest. April 23, 2008, 11:35 pm

  2. ranjeet sih says:

    thanks April 24, 2008, 11:57 am

  3. J says:

    YES!! The company Innotec dont help out but this does! April 24, 2008, 9:42 pm

  4. b.qiya says:

    Hiya. Sorry, but this method doesn't work out with me. Am using OS X host and Win XP guest and just cannot connect to the shared folder using Explorer. Do you have any alternative ideas?

    Cheers. July 20, 2008, 11:08 pm

  5. Aaron Ortiz says:

    Hi b.qiya, I have the same woeful problem...:( July 21, 2008, 10:50 pm

  6. Grub says:

    tis works! thx August 6, 2008, 5:18 pm

  7. Ginger says:

    Thanks for this. It worked for me September 4, 2008, 7:37 pm

  8. The One says:

    Hello, thank you very much for your posting. It really helped.

    To hell with all those other so called fkin' geeks on the Internet who, instead of helping you out, rather confuse the hell out of you. If you don't know, don't fkin' write and waste our time. If you know what you are writing, then write it like this post -- simple solution that actually gets thing done.

    Thanks again September 5, 2008, 11:43 pm

  9. Olivier Berger says:

    It seems that the 1.6.0 works but versions above may not. More details here : http://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/313 September 26, 2008, 6:00 pm

  10. Nikhil Khullar says:

    Thanks a lot !!! October 5, 2008, 7:57 am

  11. rca says:

    thanks! I got virtualbox to run fine, and was pissed when I couldn't find my shared folder under windows. Now I got all my files up and running sweet thanks again! October 8, 2008, 5:01 am

  12. brandon says:

    THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH!!!! I couldn't figure out why the shared folders weren't working. You're awesome. October 12, 2008, 7:43 pm

  13. Czadd says:

    I can't believe this worked. I've been working all day on this problem and these simple steps did the trick.

    Thanks! October 13, 2008, 6:19 am

  14. Fritz says:

    Thank you Giannis for this post.

    I almost gave up before I found this page. Most of the instructions out there are very complicated.

    This post is simple, to the point and it worked for me. I am using OS X as the host. October 26, 2008, 8:27 am

  15. smv says:

    Thx buddy. It solved my problem. Thx alot November 8, 2008, 4:23 am

  16. Peter says:

    Thank you giannis, you have saved me a lot of time and effort pointing this bug. I knew I had it working once but could remember what I did. November 13, 2008, 11:24 pm

  17. Fred says:

    Great! This is great Thanks! November 21, 2008, 12:00 am

  18. anonim says:

    i ve got micro xp and it dosn't work. anybody know how to install "net use"? December 9, 2008, 12:42 am

  19. vanfbkr says:

    Wow, I looked for this all day and came across your help - quite easy and it works. Thanks!!! December 20, 2008, 3:24 pm

  20. Garry says:

    Thank you for this clever solution! All the other suggestions just said "Click on Network Places". When I did that, my shared folders didn't appear. Only you were able to anticipate this difficulty and help me and a lot of others solve this problem. December 21, 2008, 1:36 am

  21. p liu says:

    It does not work for me. I'm in Vista running XP with VirtualBox 2.1.0. I don't see the shared folders under My network using your method. Virtual PC seems more intuitive for file transfer btw systems that you can drag and drop to either one, although VirtualBox feels faster. Any solution to the problem I'm having? December 30, 2008, 9:09 am

  22. p liu says:

    It turns out that I need to install Guest Additions in order to use the shared folders function. It's working now after I did that. Thanks for the instruction. December 30, 2008, 9:57 am

  23. Dominik Wujastyk says:

    Excellent! Got me unwedged. Thank you very much.

    Dominik January 2, 2009, 9:21 pm

  24. Asim says:

    Came really close to giving up too and this solved my problem perfectly. Thanks! January 13, 2009, 12:02 am

  25. kecheri says:

    You saved my life.

    I am using Virtualbox 2.1.2 and running winxp on Ubuntu 8.10. Wasted about an hour trying to figure out this.
    I shared the folder and couldnt find it by going to network places or by manually typing \\vboxsvr\.

    This is really weird bug. Thanks again for your post! January 26, 2009, 6:34 pm

  26. suradasa says:

    If you don't want to have to do that every time, you can use the option "Map Network drive" to map a drive letter to it. Then it can be accessed from My Computer. I did it from an "Open" dialog in Powerpoint (in the upper right). February 4, 2009, 3:06 am

  27. i says:

    Doesn't work for me, I don't see the "VirtualBox Shared Folders". February 5, 2009, 6:59 pm

  28. obo says:

    i see nothing on osx host, xp guest, guest additions installed. has anyone succeeded with an osx host? February 6, 2009, 9:50 am

  29. sk says:

    Thank you very much!
    All works fine. It's wonderful bug from Microsoft! February 9, 2009, 7:01 pm

  30. Aaron says:

    Works like a charm, thanks. February 11, 2009, 1:16 am

  31. Lee says:

    Works like a charm. Thanks i've spent 3 days trying to get this to work. Now just need to get fedora to see windows on Virtualbox now :) February 11, 2009, 9:20 pm

  32. bj says:

    Yeah nice :) Helped me out much.... searched the complete "my computer" but didn't find any drive haha-... February 14, 2009, 8:49 pm

  33. Dieter_be says:

    Thanks ! The funny thing is you need to follow this to the letter otherwise it doesn't work. I couldn't believe this at first... February 21, 2009, 6:53 pm

  34. mel says:

    Yeah... this didn't work at all for me. March 5, 2009, 7:15 am

  35. McColley.net » Blog Archive » The Beginner’s Guide to Creating Virtual Machines with VirtualBox [How-to] says:

    [...] to running Windows apps seamlessly inside Linux. Giannis Tsakiris has also explained setting up sharing from an XP guest, and the process is much the same for any virtual Windows (although some of the network tools have [...] April 11, 2009, 1:31 am

  36. The Beginner’s Guide to Creating Virtual Machines with VirtualBox [How-to] · TechBlogger says:

    [...] to running Windows apps seamlessly inside Linux. Giannis Tsakiris has also explained setting up sharing from an XP guest, and the process is much the same for any virtual Windows (although some of the network tools have [...] April 11, 2009, 2:12 am

  37. The Beginner’s Guide to Creating Virtual Machines with VirtualBox [How-to] - 1213th Edition | Technology Revealed says:

    [...] to running Windows apps seamlessly inside Linux. Giannis Tsakiris has also explained setting up sharing from an XP guest, and the process is much the same for any virtual Windows (although some of the network tools have [...] April 11, 2009, 2:23 am

  38. infoyourway.com » The Beginner’s Guide to Creating Virtual Machines with VirtualBox [How-to] says:

    [...] to running Windows apps seamlessly inside Linux. Giannis Tsakiris has also explained setting up sharing from an XP guest, and the process is much the same for any virtual Windows (although some of the network tools have [...] April 11, 2009, 2:38 am

  39. The Beginner’s Guide to Creating Virtual Machines with VirtualBox [How-to] | My Blog Channel says:

    [...] to running Windows apps seamlessly inside Linux. Giannis Tsakiris has also explained setting up sharing from an XP guest, and the process is much the same for any virtual Windows (although some of the network tools have [...] April 11, 2009, 3:01 am

  40. The Beginner’s Guide To Creating Virtual Machines With VirtualBox | Lifehacker Australia says:

    [...] to running Windows apps seamlessly inside Linux. Giannis Tsakiris has also explained setting up sharing from an XP guest, and the process is much the same for any virtual Windows (although some of the network tools have [...] April 11, 2009, 3:27 am

  41. The Far Edge » Blog Archive » The Beginner’s Guide to Creating Virtual Machines with VirtualBox [How-to] says:

    [...] to running Windows apps seamlessly inside Linux. Giannis Tsakiris has also explained setting up sharing from an XP guest, and the process is much the same for any virtual Windows (although some of the network tools have [...] April 11, 2009, 4:56 am

  42. The Beginner’s Guide to Creating Virtual Machines with VirtualBox [How-to] | Techcom for dummy says:

    [...] to running Windows apps seamlessly inside Linux. Giannis Tsakiris has also explained setting up sharing from an XP guest, and the process is much the same for any virtual Windows (although some of the network tools have [...] April 11, 2009, 6:07 pm

  43. OS X says:

    the problem is insisting on VB 2.2.0 installed on Mac OS X, hosting windows xp; shared folder doesn't show up under "entire network" April 12, 2009, 9:48 am

  44. The Beginner’s Guide to Creating Virtual Machines with VirtualBox [How-to] | Web Burning Blog says:

    [...] to running Windows apps seamlessly inside Linux. Giannis Tsakiris has also explained setting up sharing from an XP guest, and the process is much the same for any virtual Windows (although some of the network tools have [...] April 13, 2009, 2:08 pm

  45. Roman says:

    Thanks a lot!
    It works for me - Windows XP SP1 as a guest, Ubuntu 9.04 as a host. May 1, 2009, 10:32 am

  46. speed32219 says:

    Thank You, Thank You, did I say Thank You.
    I have been trying to copy stuff all day, searches by google kept pointing me in the wrong direction. It seems that with every release of VB there was a different way to copy between the os's. Thank you again. May 18, 2009, 6:08 am

  47. Guille says:

    THANK YOU!!!!! May 22, 2009, 4:57 pm

  48. Lee says:

    Hi,

    Thanks so much. My tech guy got everything right except this last crucial bit of information. I learned that you cannot use a search in XP to find these shared files. Nor do they turn up in the program files. June 8, 2009, 4:15 am

  49. Davor says:

    This seems to be solved in SP3. June 19, 2009, 3:27 pm

  50. Chris Friend says:

    Thank you VERY much. Extreme help!!! June 20, 2009, 7:22 am

  51. Rajasekaran says:

    Thanks for your information. I had some problem while moving large files between guest OS to host OS using USB drives. Now my problem will be solved. Once again Thank you to all who may work for this....

    by,
    V.Rajasekaran June 25, 2009, 8:01 pm

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