I have a Ubuntu Linux laptop, running VirtualBox 3.2.8 OSE, and my guest OS is Windows XP. The laptop has both a wired ethernet and a WiFi interface, and when the laptop is docked I prefer to use the wired ethernet interface as it is much faster and more reliable. I do this by disabling (in Linux) the WiFi interface. However when I undock, I need to use the WiFi interface so I re-enable it.
VirtualBox is configured to share both of these interfaces with the VM, in 'bridge' mode. So Windows XP (within the VM) sees two network interfaces and knows nothing about WiFi.
The problems happen when I undock - in Windows, if you physically unplug an interface without disabling it, all hell breaks loose as programs and the OS continue to try the original interface. Lots of time-outs and essentially everything breaks. This is particularly bad when coming out of suspend with a different real interface available. But if you manually disable an interface within WinXP, it deals with it properly and the problems go away.
So my problem is really this - when I undock my laptop and enable WiFi (in Linux), my WinXP VM goes nuts until I manually disable the wired-ethernet interface. Then everything is fine, until I re-dock, disable WiFi (in Linux) and then manually enable the wired-ethernet interface in WinXP, and disable the bridged-WiFi interface too.
Is there a way (perhaps with Guest Additions, or some scripting) that I can automate this to prevent WinXP from getting hung-up on non-functional network bridge interfaces?
