Virtual PC (XP Pro Guest) on Win 7 Pro Host bridged network popping in and out

Hey all. I'm not a network guy and I'm stumped.

I'm running Virtual PC with a Win 7 Pro host and XP Pro guest and bridged connection.

Guest runs a torrent client and it works SOMETIMES.

However, it seems every few minutes Guest loses its connection so that I can't even ping the host or the router. Then, another few minutes and network's back.

for Host and Guest, ipconfig shows same dns (router) and subnet and it's all like so...

Router/Gateway: 192.168.3.1 (Handles DHCP and port forwarding)
Host: 192.168.3.2
Guest 192.168.3.9 (flaky as a homemade biscuit)


any thoughts on what to try?

 

IP conflict on the network? Either another computer with one of those IP's or a DHCP server with those IP's in it's range.

It has happened that someone plugs in a device that has the same IP range as it's default, the device ends up being the same IP as the firewall. We had internet / no internet in the entire company for a few mintues all day long. I will never again build a network with IP's anywhere near common defaults and the staff has learned that the rules really are there for a reason.

Are you doing this from within the same building?

 

Thanks for the response.

When I shut down the Guest VM, I get "Destination Host Unreachable" which I think is what I should expect if there were a direct IP conflict. Router is handling DHCP and I'm mostly confident it's not serving out the same IP address. Is there a different sort of IP conflict?

Among other things I've tried.

Update host NIC driver. (from what I've read, you can't update guest driver, I tried anyway and the install refused to run)

Event Log. Not clean but suspicious events not repeating when guest reboots or connection is lost. The one that was in any way remarkable was from the System log on the host from "bowser" saying that the guest was trying to be the main computer browser on the network. (must research that to find out what it means).

 

It is possible for a device with a static IP to conflict. Could happen that someone was troubleshooting and set an ip and forgot to erase it. Could be a device with that IP came new with a default IP in your range.

192.168.3.X isn't a common range for defaults, but there are a few.

Are both of these systems on one network? Or is one at a different location?

Can you set each computer to run a continuous ping to the router and then disconnect from Virtual PC on each one and see if it is losing connection over time without that running? If it doesn't lose the router than it's probably related to the program. If it does, then it's something in the network and you'll be sure which system is the one dropping off.

from the command prompt ping 192.168.3.1 -t
log off, log back in after several minutes and Ctrl-C to stop the ping. It will give you statistic summary. If you let it run too long, older information will be lost. you can't run it for an hour and get all of the data but you won't blow your system up if you leave it for an hour either.

There can be other issues, the IP is just one I've run into several times.

 

Well first of all he is talking vms, so the multiple location and so on stuff, isn't an issue. I would say that virtual pc might be loosing connection due to the fact that your torrenting, and it may not be designed to handle that kind of connections? For troubleshooting id like to see you see what happens with the guest vm if you dont run the torrents, and see if it still has connection issues.

 

Ah yes, sorry, I'm used to setting up a VPN and remoting through it. That has given me conflicts. I use another connection for support sometimes, Teamviewer, and haven't seen that issue. It does have a similar symptom as those IP conflicts.

 

Went to a different guest (set up without torrent client) and it seems to be working fine. Kinda not the answer I was looking for, but, after some other tests, I've concluded that VPC guests on Win 7 hosts are not ready for torrent.

Thanks handygal and Colemanguy. I sincerely appreciate the effort.