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Using VirtualBox, I have a Windows 7 guest VM using VirtualBox on a Windows 7 host machine. I can configured a permanent, read-only, automounting shared folder. I can see the shared folder fine, once I have logged into the guest VM.
I would like the a service on the guest OS to be able to access the shared folder before a user has logged into the guest OS. Is this possible? It is OK if the access is only possible using the UNC path, without a mapped drive being available.
The documentation is little ambiguous. In the "Guest Additions" chapter it states that "Guest Additions will automatically mount that folder as soon as a user logs into the guest OS". However this is in the context of when the shared folder will be mapped to a network drive, not describing when the UNC path becomes accessible.
I have seen various comments (eg this one and here) which point out for a Linux guest it is possible to force it to load the vboxvfs module early to enable access to the shared folders. I can't find an equivalent for Windows Guests.
The alternative is to setup a host-only network to share the folder, but this feels unnecessarily complex if it can be avoided.
Background: the purpose of this setup is to test various script used to install applications and configure a windows machine using WPKG. These scripts are run by the guest before the login screen is should. In production the shared folder would normally reside on a network share somewhere.
Andy Smith
Posted 2017-04-27T12:47:26.793
Reputation: 11
1This seems easy enough to determine. Create a shared location within the VM, log out of the user within the guest os, determine if the shared location can still be accessed. I suspect it will work like any share folder within Windows though. – Ramhound – 2017-04-27T12:49:15.370