UPDATE: Solved by choosing another network adapter in the VirtualBox Network settings / Advanced.
It did not solve accessing the shared folders on the Win 7 Prof host but did allow access to folders on a NAS.

I'm following the guide https://knowledgebase.macrium.com/display/KNOW72/Restoring+an+image+from+within+the+Rescue+Media
I already have a MR7 rescue CD and an MR7 image of my C: partition which is on my K: drive and I have made it a Shared folder so it appears in my Host (Windows 7 Prof 64bit ESU) Network under the host's name ASUS.
I defined a new Virtual Box machine with a Network Bridge
The VBox machine is started and boots from the MR7 rescue CD and MR7 starts.
I then click Browse for an Image file and then click on the Network icon. See below:



As you can see my ASUS network location in the host does not show.
Anyone know how to fix this please, or alternatively how to access the image during the VBox restore.
Thanks for reading.
Alan UK
PS I think Reflect is the best backup/recovery software I've used for a long time, well at least since before TrueImage became bloatware

A few questions:

• What is the K drive itself? A network share? An external hard drive?
• What do you mean you made the K drive a shared folder so it appears in your host?  You shouldn't have to make a drive a shared folder for it to appear on the host system, where it's presumably accessible as the K drive even if you're not sharing it out from there.
  
• Since you're using bridged networking, have you confirmed that you have any network connectivity at all?  Open up Command Prompt by clicking the icon for it in the taskbar and confirm you can ping external resources, like your network's router.  If you can do that, try pinging your host's IP address.  If you CAN'T do those things, you've got some network issues at the VBox level to sort out and/or some Windows Firewall issues on the host to sort out.  But if you CAN ping those resources, then the fact that you might not be able to browse by using the Network view doesn't necessarily mean you couldn't access your target by manually entering a path to a share, such as \\192.168.1.20\MyFileShare.  In fact I seem to recall that browsing that way requires SMBv1, which was disabled by default starting with a relatively recent Windows 10 release because SMBv1 is horribly insecure and slow.  SMBv2 is the new minimum supported standard, but you can't do "Network Neighborhood" style browsing anymore except via some newer protocol that uses IPv6, which might not be available here for some reason.  (I'm less familiar with that.)  But if your Rescue Media was built using a relatively recent Win10 kernel, it wouldn't support SMBv1.  Reflect does offer a checkbox under the Advanced options of Rescue Media Builder to forcibly re-enable it, but I really wouldn't recommend that.  You could simply enter the share path in the file name field of that browser window.  Or you could go to the Restore tab, click "Folders to search", and add your share path there.  That will cause ALL backups in that folder to be visible, including useful information such as the date the backup occurred (not always the same as the Date Modified timestamp), rather than you having to browse for a specific image in that browser window.
  

Many thanks for replying so quickly

> What is the K drive itself? A network share? An external hard drive?

A partition on the internal main hard drive of my host system (Win 7)

> What do you mean you made the K drive a shared folder so it appears in your host? You shouldn't have to make a drive a shared folder for it to appear on the host system, where it's presumably accessible as the K drive even if you're not sharing it out from there.

I made it a shared folder so it appears in my Network locations of my host. I didn't think the Virtual Machine when booting into MR7 recovery would be able to access the K: partition directly but only via the network bridge.

Since you're using bridged networking, have you confirmed that you have any network connectivity at all? Open up Command Prompt by clicking the icon for it in the taskbar and confirm you can ping external resources, like your network's router. If you can do that, try pinging your host's IP address.

Yes, I can ping my host.

But if your Rescue Media was built using a relatively recent Win10 kernel, it wouldn't support SMBv1.

My rescue media was created under the Win 7 Prof host system.

You could simply enter the share path in the file name field of that browser window.

Doesn't work with K:\..... Says drive does not exist. Ditto if I try to access K: in the command window of the VM.

Or you could go to the Restore tab, click "Folders to search", and add your share path there.

I entered \\ASUS\<name shared folder> gives me a prompt to enter a user name and password. I created a new user in the host and used that but it not accepted - the login box remains on screen. If I enter just \\ASUS\ I get folder does not exist.

I went back to the Host and to the shared folder on K:\ and clicked Share again and added the new user. Went back to the MR7 and the "Folders to search" and again tried to add but get rejected at the security screen (enter user name and p/w).

Just in case, I aborted the VM machine and then started it again. Went to "Folders to search" and again entered \\ASUS\<name shared folder> but this time it simply said the specified folder does not exist - no user/pw prompt

I do have an existing Win XP VM and the shared folder is visible in My Network but is not accessible (you do not have permission) even though the user is again listed in the folder share on the host. I must admit in the past I've had endless problems getting network shares to work but I do have other shares working OK.

I'm still perplexed as to why the RASPBX network location appears but the ASUS does not. RASPBX is a Raspberry Pi / Debian PC. Seems to me that if the ASUS host PC is not visible in the VM network then none of it's folders are going to be accessible either.
UPDATE I noticed that the Win 7 VM machine had a different network adapter to the Win XP VM so made it the same. Now the RASPBX network location does not show in the Win 7 VM when selecting an image to restore. I set network adapter back and still does not show. Note that the RASPBX PC is offline at the moment though it still appears in the Win 7 Host under Network places.

Many thanks for your help.
Alan

The SMBv1 theory would depend on the kernel used for the Rescue Media build, which is not necessarily tied to the OS of the system that built it.  The WinPE/RE version used for Rescue Media is shown in the title bar along the very top of the Rescue interface.  (And incidentally, if you're on Win7, it can be wise to create Rescue Media using WinPE 10 simply so that you have native support for a much larger range of technologies that weren't natively supported in Win7, such as UEFI booting, NVMe, USB 3.x, etc.)

When you enter a username and password, try entering the user as ComputerName\User, e.g. ASUS\Alan.  And you shouldn't have to create a new user for this.  An admin user account that exists on your system would be fine.  But you definitely can't just enter "K:\" as the path.  There is absolutely no connection between what drive or network share is assigned K in Rescue Media (if any) and what drive/network share is assigned K in your host Windows environment.  Drive letters only have any meaning within the host OS where they're assigned.  When you share a folder, you're prompted to choose a share name.  From that point on, the Sharing tab of that folder/drive will show a Network Path that can be used to access that share remotely.  That's what you should use, with the possible deviation of using your target's IP address rather than its hostname if needed.

A host not being visible in the Network window will not necessarily render its shares inaccessible.  If you plug a system into a large enterprise network, your Network browser isn't going to populate with hundreds or thousands of systems on the network even though you may be able to access those systems by connecting to them by name/IP.

Thanks again for another prompt reply.
I tried \\ASUS\<shared folder name> and at the user / pw prompt I keyed ASUS\Alan..... and this was accepted (if I mistyped it said user not found - so it must be reaching the host PC) but I get the Network location cannot be reached. Actually at the bottom of the login dialog box it also says the Network location cannot be reached.

Clicking the ..... to browse and then selecting Network is not showing any network locations, not even the RASPBX.

I do happen to have a Win 10 Rescue CD. I tried that but it just didn't boot. The CD LED was on constantly. Tomorrow I will make another Win 10 Rescue CD and try again.

Alan

Happy to help!  To be clear, my example of "ASUS\Alan" was just an example.  If your computer name happens to be ASUS and it happens to have an admin user account with the username "Alan", then I guess that was just a lucky guess, but if not then you'll need to make the appropriate substitutions there.  Did you make sure that the username you're using (or a group of which it's a member) has the appropriate access both under the Sharing tab and under the Security tab?  You need to clear both "gates" when accessing a folder from a remote location.

In terms of the CD, are you using a physical CD in a physical drive?  If so, then when trying to boot a VM, you can make this a lot easier on yourself by simply having Rescue Media Builder generate an ISO file, which is essentially an image of an optical disc much like Reflect can create image files of hard drives.  Then set the virtual CD/DVD drive of your VM to use that ISO file as its "disc".

Hi. Spent many an hour trying to fix this.
I ran the Reflect Win 10 Rescue CD on my other PC running Win 10 and the system booted OK, first with Win PE and then  Reflect Recovery but still I could not access any network shares.

I then checked my router and it was not seeing the Win PE system.
When the Win PE was booting I did notice it was says Loading Network (or similar) but I'm wondering if something is not quite right with the drivers. Maybe the drivers for the real PC are not compatible with the drivers for the VM network.



This person had similar problems running Win PE in a real PC: https://forum.macrium.com/PrintTopic5032.aspx
Other people have had similar problems running Win PE in Virtual Box https://forums.ivanti.com/s/question/0D51B00005BxiSC/virtualbox-winpe-network-drivers?language=en_US   I did try adding VirtualBox Extension Pack but that adds another (virtual) CD to the VM Storage but before the real CD with the Win PE (no option to change the order). The result is that when starting Virtual Box it fails to see the Win PE CD and gives an error.

NEW APPROACH
The whole purpose of creating a VM was to run Zoom. After spending about 8 hours getting nowhere  I decided to install Linux Lite in a VM using a downloaded ISO and then installing Zoom which is working.

Maybe Macrium could have a utility that takes an backup image file and creates an ISO file that could then be used in a VM, but in many cases this would be pointless if the VM could still not access the network!

I appreciate your help JP and sorry that I've not solved it.

Alan

If you can ping external network resources, then drivers are not likely to be the problem.

In terms of taking an image and using it as a VM, that already exists. It’s called Macrium viBoot. Currently it relies on Hyper-V, but Macrium said they will be adding support for VirtualBox when the next viBoot release lands. Haven’t seen an ETA on that though. Running Zoom on a Hyper-V VM probably wouldn’t work well though since I’m not sure you can attach a physical camera to a Hyper-V VM. Might be possible using Remote Desktop into the VM, but I haven’t tried that.

More experiment - bit like a dog with a bone
Started VM on my Win 7 Prof PC: Win PE runs then Reflect
Clicked on the DOS icon in the task bar and ran ipconfig and nothing is listed.
Closed and edited VM settings and chose Intel Pro 1000MT Desktop (82540EM) adapter.
Restarted VM and went to DOS window and tried ipconfig. Now it lists the ip address of the VM.
I tried arp -a and it lists  the ip address of the VM and under that the router IP address.
I went to Reflect and browsed, clicking on the network icon but all that is listed is a RaspberryPi. The host Win 7 and other network devices are not shown.
I then switched on my NAS and now I can see the NAS on the network when browsing.
Back in the DOS window I again ran arp -a and it lists the VM and under that:
- the router IP address
- the NAS IP address
- the Win 7 host IP address
- the Rasp Pi IP address
It does not list my Alarm system or my analogue/SIP adapter but then these are not storage devices.
I then tried browsing to the NAS and successfully logged on and could see all the folders
I selected an image and Reflect loaded it in the Image Restore window.

So. The problem is solved by a different network adapter. Strange as the adapter I used first (PC-Net FAST III (AM79C973) is OK with an Windows XP VM.
I still cannot see the Host PC on the network or find it with a \\<domain name>\<shared folder name>. It says the specified folder does not exist - no login prompt. Maybe that is a Firewall/Security issue in the Host.

I shall mark this as solved.