Note: These are only the basic steps and don't really deal with troubleshooting but I found even the basic steps hard to learn when the top videos involve someone's music playing in the background or instruction guides not really explaining how "next step", guess additions really are from the installation instructions.

Other notable things to keep in mind:

1. There are two versions of Virtualbox

As a newbie, you want the PUEL version: http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/VirtualBox_PUEL

This can be easy to miss because I didn't know the package manager on Mint installed the OSE version and when I encountered that problem, it took me ages (I had previously quit using Linux) before I found that information today.

You also get the latest version although that's not exactly a good thing. Around my first time of using Linux, I've read something about the latest version being buggy so that further kept me from really thinking about a situation where two versions of the same program might be the case.

2. The group permission setting is for shared folders. (I think)

One of the instructions I found confusing was this whole thing about looking for the group vbox and allowing user permissions to the group.

Now even as a newb I understood that Linux uses permission so that instruction was clear to me.

What I don't get was how it was related to Guest OS sharing and combined with my confusion of the "next step" I really couldn't figure out what to do.

Not sure if this was made easier in the latest version of Virtualbox but it seems what it does is make your home network appear in My Computer -> Tools -> Map Network Drive -> <drop down list>

After that, the two folders are shared so you can move files to and from both OSes.

3. Mouse Integration (Guest Additions) causes a pop-up on Full-screen

Well seamless mode didn't work on my Linux Mint 7 (although I was able to make it work back when Mint was still Celena) so I opted for full-screen mode only to find out that a pop-up virtualbox menu constantly appears.

I didn't try fixing it and just maximized the VirtualBox window but according to this topic all you need is to turn off mouse integration.

4. Press Right Ctrl! Press Right Ctrl! Press Right Ctrl!

One of the things my impatience got me originally was when I couldn't figure out how to get the mouse off of a Virtualized OS and was stuck.

That's rarely the problem now but it's something to always keep in mind in case you forgot and I have very short term memory.

It used to take me minutes of pressing all the ctrl, alt and windows button before I got which key "escapes" the mouse from VirtualBox.

Even now, I have the same problem with Linux using the word Super for the Windows button.

Now though, I have to remember the key because it can be head scratching trying to auto-complete the url in IE or zoom in on Adobe Reader/Firefox only to realize... oh wait... right ctrl is the host key so I need to press left ctrl +/-/enter.

Well, that's it. I'm sure I made a lot of mistakes in this post especially when my priority is getting Windows XP to guest on Linux Mint 7 so please correct everything I got wrong here.