Guide for getting Virtual Box to copy/paste between host & share USB drives

[glacier922]

Ok, I have been trying to solve this problem for about 5 hours, and it frustrated the hell out of me for the longest time. I finally figured it out. Most of you guys probably know how to do this, but I haven't been able to find the proper solution to it posted in any forums when doing a google search, so I am doing one right now to get it over once and for all. This guide is to help myself a few months down the line when I will probably forget everything and my computer crashes, I have no means of retrieving how to do it. I also hope that it will serve some of you well.

Since Virtual Box is free open software compared with VMware, this might be the best solution for lots of people, but it's not as idiot proof as VMware. The version I will be referencing is 5.1.1 One of the main problems is the drag and drop file does not work upon new installation of Windows.

So what you need to do is click "Devices" on the top menus and go all the way down to Insert Guest Addition CD image. From there you will see under my computer a CD rom saying "Guest Addition CD image" or something like that.

Click on it and install the packages. Then restart the computer. That's it. I have no idea why it was so difficult for the internet to say this. Then of course you will go under Devices again and under Drag and Drop, Copy and Paste, select what you want, host to guest, bidirectional, whatevers.

For your USB devices to be recognized, you will have to install the extension pack.


You can find this here: https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

You'll have to install this under the Administrator user account. Tried many times on a regular user account and for the life of me, will not install. After this, then you restart the virtual machine, also restart your regular computer.

Then voila, all should work. Virtual Box is actually a good alternative to VMware, and it's FREE!

Just my 2 cents. Hope this helps someone, but really it's just a guide for me in case I forget.

Cheers.

[Brainbuster]

Totally lost me from the first step.

"So what you need to do is click "Devices" on the top menus..."

Seems like you jumped to step 4 or something.
The top menus of what?

[vidim]

Brainbuster:
He means devices from the virtualbox menu at the upper edge of the window. Here is a pic I found

[glacier922]

Ok, reading my own post 2 years later, and I have no idea what I did back then, but I can follow what I wrote before. LOL. Software should never be this difficult.

[Brainbuster]

Thank you!

I figured it out (it's simple actually), and to anyone else who might be confused in the future,
here is where the Devices is...

1. Get in your guest machine. This is done when within the guest.
2. When your guest machine is running, you WILL see 6 tabs at the very top left.
It should be right under "XP [Running] - Oracle VM VirtualBox"
The tabs are:
File Machine View Input Devices Help

If you do NOT see these tabs (this was my issue), you need to hold Right Control + C.
That's the hotkey by default for me anyway. It's your Host hotkey.

When the machine starts up, VirtualBox gives pops open one or two dialog boxes.
One of them says something like, "To switch from something to something else, press the Host key (Right Ctrl + C).

Then you will be in that mode that displays those tabs.
From there, it's as easy as cake.

Click Devices,
then select the option Drag & Drop,
then select Host to Guest.

[Brainbuster]

You can also enable bidirectional copy/paste.

In Vbox, highlight your guest machine,
click Settings -> Advanced

You'll see "Shared Clipboard" right there.

Source: https://www.liberiangeek.net/2013/09...uest-machines/

[glacier922]

As I said, software should never be this hard. Lol.