# How to share a wireless connection with Virtual PC?



## Shine (Jul 13, 2002)

I have recently installed Virtual PC on my machine as I want to have multiple versions of MS Office running.

There are three virtual machines, all running WinXP Pro (as is the main machine).

That main machine has a wireless Internet connection via a Linksys WUSB54G network adapter, which is connecting to a WRT54G router.

What I want to do is make the Internet connection available to the virtual PCs.

I've been looking into this and got as far as installing the Microsoft Loopback adapter on the VPCs, but I'm not really sure what I'm doing with this and so it's not working.

I've tried to install the Linksys WLAN monitor software on the VPCs, but the installation automatically closes before it can run (some setting somewhere??)

Can anyone help out with this? I know I've probably not explained it great as I'm pretty confused with it all!

Cheers.

BTW - I'm runing Virtual PC 2004 (free version)


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## DoubleHelix (Dec 10, 2004)

I have Virtual PC installed and connect wirelessly, and I don't have to install, configure, or do anything special to get the virtual machines to connect. It just works. In the Settings for the virtual machine, what is Networking set to? Adapter 1 should be your computer's physical wireless network card (if that's how it's connected now).


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## Shine (Jul 13, 2002)

Ah, for the joy of a trouble-free wireless connection! From what you're saying I can only guess it's not connecting on the virtual machines because they don't have the Linksys monitor software installed.
Networking is set to Adapter 1, which is the correct adapter, so I can't see what else is could be.
But when I try to install the monitor software on the VPCs, it gets automatically shut down.


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## DoubleHelix (Dec 10, 2004)

No, you shouldn't need any software. I run Windows 2000 in a virtual machine, and I connect just fine without any software.

Is the computer that's running the virtual machines connecting wirelessly?


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## Shine (Jul 13, 2002)

Yep, the main computer is connected wirelessly.

The router sending the signal is Linksys WRT54G. The adapter plugged into the PC is Linksys WUSB54G.

By default, the adapter connects to the router using the Linksys WLAN Monitor software, which opens on start-up.


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## DoubleHelix (Dec 10, 2004)

As long as the computer hosting the virtual machines is connected to the network using the wireless adapter, the virtual machines should be able to as well. Is there a reason you're using Linksys' software to control the wireless connection rather than Windows XP? I don't use any third-party utilities to manage the host connection.


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## Shine (Jul 13, 2002)

I'd much rather use XP to manage the connection, but I was getting no connection at all through that. Using the Linksys software was the only way I could get the connection to function.


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## DoubleHelix (Dec 10, 2004)

And you're running SP2? I guess if you couldn't connect using Windows XP natively, that might explain your problems with the virtual machines. You should probably troubleshoot that problem first, and then I bet the virtual machines will connect fine. They're not going to recognize the Linksys software since they don't "see" a Linksys network adapter.


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