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How to add VPC shared folder to the intranet zone

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hennep

Programmer
Dec 10, 2000
429
I would like to add a VPC shared folder to be treated as a secure location, these folders are hosted by my local pc anyway.
Network shares can be marked as intranet zone to get rid of popups like "There is an unspecified security risk".
I cannot do this for VPC shared folders because they do not have an ip-number or hostname.

Any idea how to solve this?

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Computer programmers don't byte, they nibble a bit
 
Windows Virtual PC with XPMode or another Windows 7 or Vista virtual machine running with full integration features can be highly insecure since it exposes all the host's drives to the VM by default via RDP and TS as available shares, unless the drives shared resources are specifically disabled.

In order to do the changes to the VM settings it is usually necessary to have the Virtual Machine fully powered down, not running or hibernated etc.

The trick is not to run the VM with full integration features enabled. On one hand this means you can't run applications in the VM seamlessly on the host machine, but you will have the advantage of running the VM at the best screen resolution (32-bit) rather than the default 16-bit or forced 24 bit resolution (the video driver from integration feature pack can still run, as well as USB and devices connected to the host).

First you need to enable the integration features and shut down the VM, and restart the VM after changing the Integration features settings:

In the VM settings you are best to set integration features to manual and uncheck the enable at startup checkbox. This also removes the credentials logon, and the black screen, whenever screen size is changed or switching from VM to host and back.

Your VPC VM does have an IP address - you can determine this by running
Code:
ipconfig
at the command prompt in your Virtual machine. However it is likely to be on a different network segment (by design - via NAT on a virtual ethernet adapter in VPC) from your host machine.

You can make your VM use the physical ethernet adapter on the host in the virtual machine settings by selecting Networking, Network Adapter 1 to be the same Ethernet adapter device as shown in the Control Panel\Network and Internet\Network Connections, Local Area Connection, Device Name. Your VM should now connect on the same network segment as the host machine - your Intranet - obtaining a separate IP address from your Intranet's DHCP server. Otherwise you will need to supply a Static IP address in line with your work network admin policy.

Once you know this local IP address, and you have enabled sharing of resources on the VM by adding and enabling "File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks" in the Properties of the network connection on the VM, and enabled the sharing a folder and naming the share, with any necessary credentials and passwords, you should be able to map the share from anywhere on the intranet. If you have a Workgroup, or a Domain, the VM's computer name should enable ad-hoc network access via the Windows Explorer Network side panel.

Some screenshots can be found here:

 
That's a lot of information, but it does not help me fix my problem. The screenprints differ from my version of virtual pc.
Also I don't want to give full access to the host machine. I only want to share a single folder using the folder icon shown in the statusbar of vpc, when vpc is not maximized. I can access network shares without the annoying security popups but its to much work to create a share everytime I want to access a different folder.

Are we running different version of vpc?

I am running VPC2007 6.0.192.0 and that version does not show anything about "integration services"

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Computer programmers don't byte, they nibble a bit
 
I was assuming Windows Virtual PC under Windows 7 with a guest VM like XP, in the absence of further information from yourself.

Mindreading is not my forte - so yeah, different version.

It's quite useful to define your problem cleary - what is the host operating system and the virtual machine guest OS?

It is slightly different, and simpler with Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, as far as integration is concerned.

Make sure that the virtual machine additions are installed on the guest VM (assuming a Windows OS guest).

Now you have defined the specific "Shared Folders" feature of Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, rather than any shared folders that may have been set up on the Virtual Machine, your request seems not really to have any bearing on VPC at all.

The VPC "Shared Folders" on the VPC Settings menu allow you to browse the host machine folder structure to select a folder which maps within the Virtual machine guest as a network drive.

If you wish the same folder to be visible across the intranet you need to simply share the folder that is shared from the host machine, in Windows 7 you will need to give permissions to those users who need to access the folder.

The example image linked below shows setting up a Shared folder for a Windows 2000 Virtual machine under VPC2007, and setting up a network share for the same folder on the host Windows 7.

 
Midreading is very difficult indeed :) I will try to be more clear in describing my problem.

In your last screenshot you have shared a host directory "inetpub". Try to copy a zip-file to this directory, any zipfile is alright.
In te virtual pc, right click on the zipfile in the shared folder.
In my case, instead of the context menu, I will get a popup that tells me: "This page has an unspecified potential security risk".

A "shared folder" in vpc is not a network folder.
If it was a network folder I could go to "control panel\internet options\security", add the server ip to the "local intranet\sites\advanced" page as "file://192.168.0.100". Also you have to press the button "default level" and move the slider to "low".
After this procedure the annoying popup would be gone after the next reboot.

This procedure does not work for "vpc shared folders'. There is no ip-number or share-name associated to a "vpc shared folder".
When you type "net use" in a cmd-box it lists all network shares, vpc-shares are not listed. When I try to add the ip of the hosting computer I keep getting these popups.

If it was just a popup I could get used to this problem. Recently I discoverd that I cannot save office 2010 documents to a network share or a vpc shared folder.
So I really need a way to set lower security options to vpc shared folders.

 
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