Thank you very much for your advice and comments, ill try to implement them as soon as i can and get back to you with the results. Just to let you know, the host machine is running windows XP aswell, and should be configured inline with the virtual machines, but as you say i will check firewall settings and exceptions on both virtual machines and the host, as that may be an issue. You say that you achieved fast download speed between your virtual machines, this is exactly what i am trying to achieve myself, sharing a file that no one else has access to purely in order to generate some evidence that a file search and transfer has actually taken place. Ill post up here if i come up against any problems. (or if it works first time!)

Thanks and regards,

Will