DO9 in a virtual machine can't "see" files on the VM's host

Help & Support
1

Here's a strange problem.

I have a copy of Windows 7 (32-bit) in a Virtualbox virtual machine. (Virtualbox V4).
Like all VM software, Virtualbox lets you map folders from the virtual copy of Windows to folders or drives on the host. In this case the host is Windows 7 x64.

If I use Windows Explorer in the VM, I can double-click various files residing on the host (ie in the mapped folder/drive) and they will open or execute in the VM according to what kind of file they are. PDFs will open in Acrobat, MSIs will launch an installer, jpgs will open the Windows picture viewer and so on.

If I use DOpus, I can still list the contents of folders on the host, but when I double-click a file, Dopus says it can't read the file.

Does anyone know what is going on? I'm going to try a trial version of Dopus 10 to see if the problem still exists. But I can't think of a reason that Windows Explorer can open a file but Dopus cannot.

2

Sorry, this thread isn't really named properly. DO 10 can definitely "see' files on a VM's host, just not open them according to the correct handler (if my terminology is correct).

3

What's the actual error you get? And what path are you accessing the files by?
Can you copy them to the VM using Opus?

4

I'm using the shared folders feature that appears on the Devices menu of the client Virtualbox window.
The shared folders appear as \vboxsrv\E_DRIVE within DO and Windows Explorer.
File > Properties on the shared drive reports it as Type:Network drive and File system: VBoxSharedFS

After investigating this further, the behaviour seems to be limited to executables, and applies to both Windows Explorer and Dopus 9 :confused: . There are two errors that occur, either:

  • When double-clicking an EXE on the host the error is: ShellExecuteEx failed; code 3. The system cannot find the path specified.
  • When double-clicking an EXE on the host the error is: . The specified path does not exist. Check the path, and then try again.

Windows firewall is OFF on the virtual machine's copy of Windows. There is no firewall at all on the host.
All other file types seem to open in the VM using their respective handlers.

I suspect this is more of a network issue than a Dopus or Windows explorer issue. It just puzzles me that this is limited to executables.

5

So we've gone from all files working in Explorer and none in DOpus, to all files except EXEs working in both? :slight_smile:

Try adding the path to your network share to the Trusted Sites category in Internet Properties.