I have now resolved the cause of the lack of NAT Internet connection on 
a Virtual Box MS Win 7 guest.  After I installed SL 7.2 on my wife's new 
laptop,
I restored (via a cp from an external USB hard drive that held all of 
the files that were not SL installed, including all of the Virtual Box 
guest files) the Virtual Box
guest files from her previous laptop to the new machine.  I installed 
the Virtual Box EL7 RPM, configured VirtualBox to recognize the restored 
guest files, and the
NAT network functioned over the 802.11 WNIC controlled by SL 7 Network 
Manager -- everything worked (indeed, any statements that NAT would not 
work with 802.11 in
"new" kernels were indeed red herrings).  When I then restored her guest 
machine (MS Win 7 Pro as well) to my SL 7 laptop, again, NAT worked.  
Thus, I have determined that
(somehow) the MS Win device NIC device driver that Virtual Box uses to 
connect to the NIC supplied by Virtual Box to the MS Win 7 guest was 
"broken".

I have created a second virtual disk and have attached this to the MS 
Win 7 system that "works", and am in the process of doing a MS Win 7 
backup (not a Linux backup) to this additional
virtual disk that the MS Win 7 guest "sees" now as drive E: .  I do not 
know MS Win very well at all, using it as an appliance, and real source 
code and OS architectural details are not readily available (several of 
my students who worked in MS Win "shops" have access to material 
licensed only to such "shops", not to persons such as myself, and even 
these have large limitations according to my students.)

  I know that I may remove said virtual disk from the working MS Win guest
and attach it, via Virtual Box, to the non-working MS Win guest.  I am 
not asking for a response to the SL list, but if anyone on this list 
knows how I can use this "backup" virtual hard drive to restore
just the MS Win systems files (specifically, just this NIC driver and 
whatever associated MS Win 7 systems files it "needs"), I would greatly 
appreciate off-list (via my private email, [log in to unmask]
if possible) as to what to do -- or a URL with the necessary 
instructions.  Any help greatly would be appreciated.

All of the guests in question are MS Win 7 Pro SP 1, and all have the 
necessary MS Win
license.  If at all possible, I do *NOT* want to "smash" the 
applications installed into the MS Win guest when I restore just the MS 
Win OS files.

Yasha Karant