Virtual Box

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I can't seem to find a lot of information on using virtual box with my searches on the forum, so I thought I'd start a new thread. I just installed windows 7 on my 2009 iMac. I have a couple of questions

1- I can't find the vboxguestadditions ISO that the users manual says should be in the installation directory for virtual box. Where is it? or where can I get it?

2- I'm hoping that the guest additions will help with this, but how can I use my print from my virtual machine? I have a printer hooked directly to the iMac, I'm still figuring out how a virtual machine works. It looks like I might be able to make the virtual machine use the usb port, but i'm afraid that that will take it away from my mac, like it did with my DVD drive when I did the installation.

Thanks for any help!
 

vansmith

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1. With the VM booted, go to Devices > "Install Guest Additions...". Follow the wizard in Windows and reboot your VM. Voila!

2. As for the printing, I've never tried it here myself. I assume that if you give a USB port to the VM, OS X will not be able to use it - you can't use more ports than you have. ;) Test it out.
 
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Where is "devices"? It's not the devices menu in the windows start menu
 

vansmith

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The devices menu for VirtualBox, in the menu bar.
 
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well now I feel foolish, ... I'm still becoming accustomed to how the mac has the menu bar on the top of the screen.

Thanks for your help!
 
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Okay, so I have the guest additions installed and I'm not sure how to get the share folder option to work. I created a folder which I named "window share" in my documents folder, and when I try to choose that as a share folder from the vm window it won't let me click ok, the box is grayed out. Do I need to share the folder from the mac first before it can work with the vm?
 

vansmith

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I'm not sure about this but your virtual machine may have to be shut down to set up shared folders. And the shared folders feature of VB has nothing to do with the operating systems - it is something that is part of VB.
 
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As it turns out virtualbox won't accept spaces in the title of the share folder. Who knew?
 

vansmith

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I suggest you take a look at the VB user manual here. Many of these little issues are probably answered in there for you.
 

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