Mapping a network drive !

[D_block]

Ok guys here my thing. I never did any kind of mapping of the sort, but what i wanna do is this. Im using vm ware ace in xp currently to test out some antivirus programmes, nod32 and kaspersky so far, so i have two windows xp os's installed in vmware. but my antivirus software if on the host pc , and i dont have a flash .

so what i wanna do is to use the drive which i save my software files on as a mapped drive so the two virtual environments can connect to it and access the software files.

i know from looking at my ip address and the two vm os's ip address its basically on the same network . e.g say the host is 192.165.80.1 the other two will be 192.165.80.128and 192.165.80.129 .

so can anyone help me out here, and as i said i never did this before so you would want to go step by step

Also would i have to use the ip addresses to map or just the pc's name ?

Edited December 6, 2007 by D_block

[spacesurfer]

You don't have to "map" a drive. You just need to share your software folder on your host pc. Make sure you have your host pc with the same login/password as your two virtual xp's. If your virtual xp's do not have a login, create one with the same login/password as your host.

Then, make sure all of your computers (physical and virtual) have the same workgroup. right-click my computer, properties --> look for workgroup and assign give it the same workgroup name. computer names can be different. You'll have to restart all of them for changes.

If you have static IP, make sure your subnet mask is 255.255.255.0 and not 255.255.0.0. I was doing the same thing your are doing and I just about went bald trying to figure out why I couldn't share folders and my subnet mask was 255.255.0.0 instead of 255.255.255.0. I'm not sure how that happened. But once that was corrected, it worked.

Then, make sure in your firewall you give access to share files across each computer by listing the ip's of each computer. In Norton, I have to tell the firewall my individual IP's that are safe for sharing files.

Then, once all that is done, go to "My Network Places". Then on right hand side, click on Workgroup Computers. You should be able to see all the computers that belong to that workgroup.

If you don't, try pinging the computer. Open command prompt. type "ping computername" when computername is the name of the computer. If it can't be pinged, then either it doesn't belong in the same workgroup or firewall is blocking it still, or you got your subnet mask wrong.

Hope that helps.

Oh yeah, once all that is done, you can map a network drive. Basically, all that means is you are assigning a drive letter to you host's software folder. You don't need ip to map, you actually need to know the network path to map. For example, if your are sharing your host folder called D:\Software as "Software" and your host computername is "MyPC", then the network path is "\\MyPC\Software". If you are sharing E:\Programs as "Programz" on computer MyComputer, then "\\MyComputer\Programz". Mapping makes it easier to connect to your shared resource by giving it a drive letter so in explorer, you don't have to type \\MyComputer\programz. You can simply type the drive letter that you assigned it.

Edited December 6, 2007 by spacesurfer