Can't access VirtualBox host-only network from windows host

Solution 1:

If you want to communicate with your VMs with 192.168.56.XXX IP, you need the host Virtual Box interface to have an IP on the same range. Your interface don't (169.254).

On a fresh installation of VBox 3.1.8, it creates a new interface named "VirtualBox Host-Only Network" with a static IP address of : 192.168.56.1/24.

Your interface is most probably misconfigured to use DHCP. Change it to use 192.168.56.1 with 255.255.255.0 netmask and it should work.

Solution 2:

I was able to fix this by giving my server a static address of 192.168.56.11. Then, I was able to ping my guest OS from the host. I also added a host file entry on my host machine to make it easier to access.

I'm still unable to ping the host from the guest... not sure why.

Solution 3:

Your VMs are getting IPs like 169.* because their DHCP clients are not finding a DHCP server to give them a lease. Therefore, the IP of the host & IPs of the VMs are not accessible to each other. A static route won't really solve this. You need to figure out why the VMs are not getting an IP lease, or you could try manually setting the IP addresses to the same private Class C (192.168.56.*) that your host is on.

Solution 4:

try this:

http://brianreiter.org/2010/09/18/fix-virtualbox-host-only-network-adapter-creates-a-virtual-public-network-connection-that-causes-windows-to-disable-services/

BTW, could not use powershell script. I needed to create *NdisDeviceType key via Regedit