Lewis G Rosenthal wrote:

A bridge is a bit different. A bridge connects two physically disparate networks (wireless and wired, or coaxial and twisted pair or even fiber and twisted pair) to the same *logical* network.

Unless the definition has been "adapted" lately, I learned that a bridge is a transparent connection between two networks. A bridge allows NETBIOS to traverse between toe physical networks where a router does not (as it only allows IP traffic through)

In any case, coming back to IP - if the systems are configured on different IP Subnets, as Lewis says, the only way to allow traffic to cross the networks is to use a router. In the early days of SVista/2 one had to configure a route statement in a physical external router (such as ADSL or Wifi router) before it could communicate with the local machine - it sounds like something similar here.

In fact with that route in place and TCPBEUI (NETBIOS over IP) configured, you may well be able to reach your wife's Windoze box from the W2K running i VBOX - which I think was the original intention.

Of course if you could simply share the local subnet in the first place all of this would be unnecessary so perhaps it's worth tracking down why that fails - it works for me when I run WinXP in VBox/2.