Issue with using USB devices with guest

Lately I've been having issues connecting USB devices (usb wifi card and a USB modem) to guest VM's with Virtualbox (installed on my laptop.) I'm now occasionally receiving driver error messages when trying to connect my usb wifi card to a guest VM with VMware workstation (installed on my desktop). I've never had an issue like this before using WMware workstation (version 7.1.3) with connecting the same device. Both my laptop and desktop have Windows 7 x64. The only thing that I can think of is a recently installed windows update that's affecting both VMware workstation and Virtualbox. I've made no changed to my guest VM's that I'm using. Any other possible causes?

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Essendon

I used to have the issue when I had Workstation running on XP, ever since I upgraded to Win 7, havent had the error any more. Maybe you can try the following links:

VMware KB: Error message is seen when launching VMware Workstation or VMware Player: Host USB device connections disabled

VMware Communities: USB and Workstation 7 on Windows 7...

VMware KB: Problems Using Some USB Devices in a Virtual Machine

Might just help.

exampasser

I'm having the exact same issue as mentioned in the second link. I've read the KB articles and nothing has worked. I also reinstalled workstation but that didn't help. I'm also having issues with the devices being in a state of "limbo" when I disconnect them from the VM but it takes 10 minutes for the host machine to regain control of those devices.

exampasser

I'm still having the issue, I even put back on Workstation 6.5 but it suffers from the same issue.

Essendon

Can you roll back to the version of Windows before the update was installed, was there a snapshot (restore point) taken? Out of curiosity, why would you go back a step to 6.5 when you were already at 7.x of Workstation? What do you have in the event logs?

exampasser

Essendon wrote: »

Can you roll back to the version of Windows before the update was installed, was there a snapshot (restore point) taken? Out of curiosity, why would you go back a step to 6.5 when you were already at 7.x of Workstation? What do you have in the event logs?

I did uninstall some recent updates to see if that did any good (it didn't). System restore never worked for me. I temp went back to 6.5 to see if it was simply an issue with the 7.x versions. I have 7.1.3 installed again. There is no information in the windows event logs.

exampasser

After messing around a bit more I found out the scenario that it tends to happen in:

I disconnect the USB device from the VM
Sometimes the USB device does not show up on the host
reconnecting the USB device to the VM results in the driver error message

exampasser

I have been reading up on my issue and apparently there have been issues regarding VMware workstation and Windows 7 sp1, they have now released workstation 7.1.4, wish me luck!

jibbajabba

exampasser wrote: »

I have been reading up on my issue and apparently there have been issues regarding VMware workstation and Windows 7 sp1, they have now released workstation 7.1.4, wish me luck!

This is indeed on the changelog of 7.1.4 .....

exampasser

Dang, it still didn't fix it.

exampasser

Apparently having one of my usb wifi cards running on the host is the cause of the problem. I'm doing more testing.

UPDATE: It does indeed appear that it's just an issue specifically with the realtek RTL8187 802.11b/g chipset.