Hardware Drivers

[Ryan C]

One thing that is keeping me from upgrading from Windows XP to a 64 bit OS Windows 7 or 8.x is the fact that there are no hardware drivers available for my scanner, several printers and some other peripheral hardware devices for the upgrade OS's. I'd have to scrap some hardware that I really love. They have drivers available for XP, but not for Windows 7 or 8. Two devices I like in particular are a printer and a scanner that run through the USB port.

Is it possible to use a Windows XP guest to access these devices even if the host OS (say Windows 7 or 8.x) has no drivers for them? I think the answer is no, but I figure it's worth checking. Having to brick this hardware would really suck and may even keep the scales tipped in favor of sticking with XP. So 8.1 starts a few seconds faster... is that really all that critical that I want to give up my favorite external devices?

Thanks.

[scottgus1]

USB devices can be passed to a guest. To the best of my knowledge, though, you have to unplug the USB cord and replug it in again after the guest OS is running to get the guest to use the USB device. Unless you are OK with doing that every time you restart your host and guest (I wouldn't be) my suggestion would be to keep an old XP computer around on your network that can use that hardware, and block that PC from the internet using your network router's internet restrictions settings (give the old computer a static IP address and block that address in the router.) Then you can keep using XP and your hardware for as long as you wish.

[Ryan C]

Thanks for the info!

The devices in question are used infrequently. So having to plug the USB cable in each time the Windows XP guest is launched to activate it is not that much of an issue (although it seems odd that there can't be a software fix to make that unnecessary).

I can use other devices with the host OS as I acquire them and leave those plugged in.

So that means that even if the host OS doesn't have a driver that supports the hardware, but the guest Windows XP OS has a driver installed that supports it through USB the hardware device will work? If so that would be both amazing and awesome!

[scottgus1]

Yes, Ryan that would work. The devices would show up as unknown devices or some such in the host, then when you boot the guest, the devices would disappear from the host and be replaced by Virtualbox USB devices, and the devices would appear in the guest.