USB device not being captured by VBox

[Nicodemus]

The previous one was my fault, but this definitely is not.

Steps followed:
1 - Physically connect the device to Lenovo but without power
2 - Restart Lenovo (Win 8.1) hopefully to clean out any rubbish from previous attempts
3 - Check Host DevMgr to ensure device not detected
4 - Start VBox
5 - Start guest (XP2)
6 - Check HOST DEVICES dropdown; device not shown
7 - Power up device
8 - Check HOST DEVICES dropdown; device seen as Unknown 04A5:20B0 [0100] (see image 2)
9 - Device not captured by VBox guest XP2
10 - Click (b) in HOST DEVICES; get this error

Failed to attach the USB device Unknown device 04A5:20B0 [0100] to the virtual machine XP2.

USB device '<unknown>' with UUID {1e72a868-12c5-4b3e-af1e-72def7e2050c} is busy with a previous request. Please try again later.

Result Code: E_INVALIDARG (0x80070057)
Component: HostUSBDevice
Interface: IHostUSBDevice {173b4b44-d268-4334-a00d-b6521c9a740a}
Callee: IConsole {8ab7c520-2442-4b66-8d74-4ff1e195d2b6}

Questions:
1) What previous request?
2) How can there be a previous request when the Host, Vbox and guest XP2 have all just been rebooted AND the device has only just been powered up?
3) Why does VBox USB filter demand an EXACT MATCH, then INSIST on changing uppercase 'A' and 'B' to lowercase 'a' and 'b' (see image 1) when the HOST DEVICES drop-down and the Host DevMgr hardware id has both as uppercase (see images 2 & 3)?

Log attached.

[Nicodemus]

Maximum of 3 attachments (something I shall remember) so here is the log file.

[Nicodemus]

Holy mackerel. The user manual "12.1.2 Collecting debugging information" refers to "release log files" (RLF) that may be viewed through 'Machine ... Show Logs'. and these logs are the prerequisite to requesting support.
Ok, that's fine - BUT - it seems there is a second set of logs hidden away in the user profile, details of which does not seem to be mentioned in the manual (unless I missed it) and the specific details contained in those hidden logs is not contained in the RLF logfile required for debugging. Why not???

I stumbled upon these hidden logs while looking for something else in my user profile, and find that they give explicit instances - in my case - of VBox being wholly incapable of grabbing a USB device from a Win8.1 host.
The hidden log of today's attempts is attached together with the 'Show Logs' file.

Further to this, image 1 shows that in the 'Devices' drop-down the USB device that cannot be captured is shown as being 'State: Captured'. What?!?!
If it has been 'captured' by VBox then why is it not available to the guest machine instead of still sitting in the host DevMgr as 'Unknown device'. I want it to be an unknown device in the GUEST not in the HOST.

And, no, mpack, I have nothing to do with that nutter touting a "3rd party fork" - whatever that might be.
I am trying to get a scanner that has served me faithfully for 13 years through Win98, Win2000 and XP into the XP guest. That's all. My laptop machine that served me for 15 years finally expired (battery pack irreplaceable) and thrust me into this f***wit world of Win8.1.

For what it may be worth I have also had no joy with openSuse 13 either, but that guest was like swimming through treacle to get anything done, so it has gone.

[socratis]

A couple of points from your first post:

• I believe that step #1 should be after step #7.
• In hexadecimal 'A' and 'a' are the same. So it is an exact match.
• Don't try to manually fill in the values, but instead try the icon with the green plus in the USB filter dialog. Then delete everything except vendor ID and product ID.

Finally, this is my typical USB laundry list. Not all of the steps may apply in your case. Follow it and report back.
--------------------------------------------------
Follow the steps below. If there is a failure, please state which step failed:

1. Make sure that the Extension Pack is installed on the host. The same version as VirtualBox.
2. Make sure that USB 2.0 is enabled in your VM settings.
3. Create a USB filter in your guest settings while the device is plugged in the host. Delete all values except Name, VendorID and ProductID. Check also http://www.linux-usb.org/usb.ids to make sure that you have the numbers correct.
4. Unplug the device.
5. Start your guest (the one that you applied the filter to). Let it start completely. Log in if you have to.
6. Plug your device. The filter should capture it and pass control to your guest. You might get a "New hardware found" wizard on the host, that's normal.
7. If the device shows up in your host and is not captured by the filter, either the filter is incorrect, or there might be a problem with your filter installation.
8. If the device shows up, but as unavailable, "eject" it from your host (if you can), but leave it plugged in. It should show up as available.
9. Are you by any chance using a USB 3.0 port?
10. Is the VirtualBox USB Driver installed in your host? Make sure your host didn't silently reject non-MS drivers (Google for Driver Signature Enforcement).
11. If on a Linux host, are you a member of the 'vboxusers' group?
12. If on a Linux host, run "sudo update-usbids".
13. Check out these two Windows-specific ways to troubleshoot potential driver installation issues:
    1. USB not working
    2. SOLVED: Failed to access the USB subsystem on Windows 7 host
    3. Remove Driver Filters to Resolve Device Manager Errors on Windows 7
14. Post the output of the following commands:

    VBoxManage list usbhost
    VBoxManage showvminfo "Your_Virtual_Machine_Name"

15. Try your favorite search engine. It can work miracles most of the time.

[Nicodemus]

Thank you, socratis. My responses are in RED

Finally, this is my typical USB laundry list. Not all of the steps may
apply in your case. Follow it and report back.
--------------------------------------------------
Follow the steps below. If there is a failure, please state which step
failed:

1. Make sure that the Extension Pack is installed on the host. The same
version as VirtualBox.
CHECK - this can be seen in the logs.

2. Make sure that USB 2.0 is enabled in your VM settings.
CHECK - this is specifically why I installed the Guest Additions.

3. Create a USB filter in your guest settings while the device is
plugged in the host. Delete all values except Name, VendorID and
ProductID. Check also http://www.linux-usb.org/usb.ids to make sure
that you have the numbers correct.
CHECK - Filter created as per your general point 3, and the VID and PID have been checked at least 50 times in Windows DevMgr (host), VBox, SANE-snapscan (snapscan.conf, description files and YAST2), original INF files (1995, 1998, 2001) - and now in that usb.ids site. They have never changed.

4. Unplug the device.
CHECK

5. Start your guest (the one that you applied the filter to). Let it
start completely. Log in if you have to.
CHECK

6. Plug your device. The filter should capture it and pass control to
your guest. You might get a "New hardware found" wizard on the host,
that's normal.
NO WAY. Nada. Nix. Unknown device in Host DevMgr. Same in VBox Devices drop down.
Non-existent in Guest.

7. If the device shows up in your host and is not captured by the
filter, either the filter is incorrect, or there might be a problem
with your filter installation.
The filter was created by VBox at step 3.
If there is a problem with the filter installation would that not also block the two USB sticks - one ancient 64Mb and one brand new 16Gb - that work without any problem?

8. If the device shows up [presumably you mean in the host], but as unavailable, "eject" it from your host (if you can), but leave it plugged in. It should show up as available.
Not ejectable. Only options in the host are to disable or to uninstall - both tried previously to no avail.
It triggers no 'New Hardware Found' notifications, it merely surfaces as 'Unknown' in DevMgr.

9. Are you by any chance using a USB 3.0 port?
No, but there is one on the panel.

10. Is the VirtualBox USB Driver installed in your host? Make sure your
host didn't silently reject non-MS drivers (Google for Driver
Signature Enforcement).
There are five VBox drivers in system32\drivers, two of which have USB in their name. Four are timestamped at the date of VBox installation. The fifth (not USB) predates the four.

11. If on a Linux host, are you a member of the 'vboxusers' group?
Not on Linux. This is a Win8.1 machine. openSuse 13 was another VM install for this problem, as well as a test for me to see what had changed since Suse 8 through 9.2 (when I last used it). Both failed.

12. If on a Linux host, run "sudo update-usbids".
N/A

13. Check out these two Windows-specific ways to troubleshoot potential
driver installation issues:
1. USB not working
<viewtopic.php?f=6&t=39104#p176270>
2. SOLVED: Failed to access the USB subsystem on Windows 7 host
<viewtopic.php?f=6&t=43541#p195973>
3. Remove Driver Filters to Resolve Device Manager Errors on
Windows 7
<http://www.faqforge.com/windows/remove- ... windows-7/>
This is the second of two threads of the same name. In the first I declared that I was a newbie but had read back through USB related topics (as well as relevant parts of the user manual but mentioned nothing about the Internet in general - see 15 below). I also stated that nothing in those topics had helped and that, unfortunately, is still the case.
Please bear in mind also that this thing is a pre-installed HOME EDITION of Win8.1 (no gpsec or secedit) running on a cheap chinese JUNK, so I am not privy to every location or every registry entry.
I have had the box for exactly eight weeks. It had to be wiped out and completely reinstalled using the OEM WinPE recovery facility after going ape in a mere 10 days.
I threw out all of Window's little toys (all the trivial (cr)APPS) so it threw its toys out of the cot. The (cr)APPS are now back but never used and the box has survived for six weeks (so far).

14. Post the output of the following commands:

VBoxManage list usbhost
VBoxManage showvminfo "Your_Virtual_Machine_Name"
POSTED

15. Try your favorite search engine. It can work miracles most of the time.
Sure. Google 'windows 7 problem' and get 417,000,000 results.
Google 'windows 7 usb problem' and get 47,000,000 results.
Add 'VirtualBox' to the string and it drops to a mere 1,890,000.
Change the version to '8.1' and there are a trivial 473,000 results, but make it '8' and it jumps back to 1,850,000.
Even version '10' comes in at 2,020,000.
I've read many of those in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese, but imagine that those in Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic, Farsi and further east to be much the same.
As stated, nothing I have read or tried has helped to solve the miscapture of this specific device. That is why joined this forum.

But now I am just being a grumpy old man so I will go to bed while you ponder awhile.

[socratis]

6. Plug your device. The filter should capture it and pass control to your guest. You might get a "New hardware found" wizard on the host, that's normal.
NO WAY. Nada. Nix. Unknown device in Host DevMgr. Same in VBox Devices drop down. Non-existent in Guest.

OK, so this is the step that fails. The USB filter fails to capture your device. Not sure if I know what's going on here, but I'm going to guess that something is capturing the device before the VBoxUSBFilter has a chance of capturing it. Is there a driver for your S2W 3300U/4300U scanner installed in your host that might be doing this?

And finally, just to make absolutely sure; when in step 4 it is mentioned to "unplug the device", it literally means unplug the USB cable, not powering down the scanner while the USB cable is still connected, right?

[Nicodemus]

Socratis, on Saturday night I read your post in the background and did the following:

1 - A full disk search for anything containing the string 'USB'.
2 - Walked through that listing and found something I had forgotten, namely the UnUSBDrv.exe program that came with the original installation files for the scanner.
3 - Ran the program as Admin - no dialog or info was displayed.
4 - Removed all the garbage from the listing, mostly statusbar (stat-USB-ar) references.
5 - Went to Win8.1 DevMgr where, at the bottom, I found the System Devices fully expanded. This had not occurred previously.
6 - Down near the bottom of that listing the problem child was something named 'Remote Desktop Generic USB device'.
7 - Opening it I found the message 'This device is not working because Windows cannot install the device drivers' (or words to that effect).
8 - Opening the Driver tab I uninstalled the device.

Those two actions, whether individually or combined, had the effect that when the scanner was plugged in and powered on not even the Win8.1 DevMgr would acknowledge its presence.
Needless to say, with Win8.1 not seeing it there was no way that VBox or the guest could see it.

Today (Sunday), I ran the installation program which has four install options under 'custom':
a) program files; b) documentation; c) USB device driver; d) twain scan program.

I installed only the device driver.

With that in place Win8.1 now identifies the 'unknown device', not among the system devices but as a stand alone device.
This is also seen in the VBox devices and the USB fiter capture panels.

I repeated your exercise - Open VBox; connect and activate device; create USB filter in VBox using filter panel 'green cross'; unplug (literally, physically) the device; start the guest; wait for it to stabilise; plug in the device;
observe it in host devmgr and it's non-attachment by VBox/guest.

Interestingly, the VBoxSVC log had a different entry this time.
00:06:26.025250 ERROR [COM]: aRC=E_INVALIDARG (0x80070057) aIID={173b4b44-d268-4334-a00d-b6521c9a740a} aComponent={HostUSBDevice} aText={USB device '<unknown>' with UUID {5e1fee0e-72b9-4874-9d97-75ac987a414b} is busy (state 'CapturingForVM[Attach]'). Please try again later}, preserve=false

Anyway, it seems that now I have a machine minus one system device but still stuck with an unknown device in the host.

If I recall correctly the only action taken with installing the USB driver was to place the M$oft file USBSCAN.SYS into windows\system32 (replacing any older version), load the firmware bin files into a folder 'usbbin' and put the twain files into a folder 'twain-32', although the last step might only have been done when installing the twain program.
Those three things - usbscan.sys, usbbin and twain-32 - remain even when uninstalling the programs and UnUSBDrv'ing the driver.
It was because they stayed behind that I was still able to use the twain connection through Irfanview in XP.
Somewhere in the mix WIA (Win Image Acquistion) gets involved but exactly what talks to what, and how, I don't know.