How to access the “Shared folders” in VirtualBox

At least on my Win7 host with Ubuntu 10.10 guest running under VirtualBox 4.0.2, I didn't have the problems you mention. Something to be aware of though is that the shared folder is mounted with permissions set with the root account user and vboxsf group as owners.

The best thing to do is to add your normal user account to the vboxsf group. You can do that by either directly editing the /etc/group file and adding your account at the end of the group definition like so (replacing goyuix with your user account):

vboxsf:x:1001:goyuix

Or you can use the GUI: System -> Administration -> Users and Groups. Click the manage groups button, scroll pretty much to the bottom of the list and find the vboxsf group, select it and click the Properties button. You can then tick the check box for each user account you want to be part of the group.

In my case the following has helped:

• update to Virtual Box 4.3.8 r92456,
• reinstallation of VirtualBox Guest Additions from virtual CD (not from apt repository),
• reboot of virtual machine.

System information:

• Host: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit,
• Guest: Linux Mint 16 Petra 32-bit.