I current have Windows 7 running Virtualbox - OpenSUSE.

From SUSE I can ping the Windows box 10.10.x.x no problems.

But from the windows box I can't ping SUSE. I have tried disabling the firewall and sill no luck. Tried pinging host name and still no luck.

The network gives an IP from router with DHCP of 10.10.x.x and the virtual box has a ip of 10.0.2.15 (SUSE IP for br0)

when I do a traceroute;
traceroute to 10.10.x.x (10.10.x.x), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets using UDP
1 10.0.2.2 (10.0.2.2) 0.177 ms 0.152 ms 0.145 ms
2 10.0.2.2 (10.0.2.2) 0.350 ms 0.466 ms 0.219 ms

I can get a ping for 10.0.2.2 but have o idea what this address is for.

Does anyone know why I would not be able to ping the SUSE box from Windows? Or know of any guides I could have a read of? Google and a few other search have not come up with anything helpful so far

You've connected the virtual machine via NAT. This means the IP headers of any packets leaving the guest are re-written to match the hosts network settings. But VirtualBox does not do any kind of reverse NAT (except for established connections), not even for packets originating from the host machine.

What I would do is create a direct connection ("Host interface"), keeping the guest in it's own subnet, and create a second IP for the host for them to communicate.

pludi ... thanks heaps... worked it out and all good can now ping host and guest OS