Typically I have no need to access my guest (Windows Server 2008) virtual machine from the host (Vista Business). I have all my applications and tools in the virtual machine. Getting ready for a demo today; however, I ran into issues where I could not upload a PowerPoint slide deck to a slide library. After I selected my slides, I would receive an error that the site was not accessible because it was not present or I did not have the correct rights. What??? The site url was valid and I was logged in as the system administrator but no dice. Thinking the problem was similar to the InfoPath issue not having a site at the root, I created a blank team site at the root (instead of under sites) but that did not work either. No errors in the event log nor in the SharePoint logs. Oh well, need an alternative. How about uploading the slide deck from the host?
Below are the steps I ran through to get this working. I am running VMware Workstation 6.5.1 build 126130:
- Open your virtual machine’s settings and set the Network Adapter to NAT.
- Install BGInfo to get the correct IP Address in your guest virtual machine. I ended up using the Default Gateway IP address.
- Open a Command Prompt, as an administrator, and ping the IP address to ensure you have the correct one.
- Open the hosts file in the C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\Etc folder in a Command Prompt. Since I am running Vista Business as my host OS, I need to run the Command Prompt as an administrator. Add the guest’s IP address to the hosts file and save the file.
- Open you guest’s Firewall settings. You will need to add the port which you are currently running the SharePoint site. Although I don’t run any sites under port 80, if memory serves me, you do not need to add the port if you want to access port 80.
- Test the URL in the host.
