virtualbox.org

I have tried already but so far not received any comment.

Is there anyone who would know how to properly establish USB for WinXP guest on a WinVista host?

I keep receiving an error message whenever I try to connect some USB device to the WinXP VM.

Devices get installed and are shown correctly in "Devices". It is however not possible to connect to them. The message is like this one, with reference to the device that can't be connected (in this case an external harddrive, but I also receive it for a Sentinel token):

"USB device 'BUFFALO INC. USB2-IDE Bridge' with UUID {ae1fcf77-c14a-4922-acc6-1ff56b949d10} is busy (waiting for a pending state change). Please try later.
Fehlercode:E_INVALIDARG (0x80070057)
Komponente:
Host
Interface:
IHost {81729c26-1aec-46f5-b7c0-cc7364738fdb}
Callee:
IConsole {1dea5c4b-0753-4193-b909-22330f64ec45}"

By the way:

Is it necessary to activate filters for the devices if no restrictions to guest access are intended?

Thx for any hint on how to resolve this issue!

Hi Xenia,

1. Start VB
2. SELECT the guest - BUT do NOT start the guest
3. Insert the USB device
4. Click on Details / General
5. Check "IO APIC"
6. Click on USB
7. Check "Enable USB Controller"
8. Click on USB Icon with the Plus sign (Add from)
and select desired USB devive and press OK
9. Start your guest

On subsequent starts of the guest, you can insert the USB device
anytime.

Note : If the USB device is inserted and VB is not running, the USB device
will be owned by the host (as usual). When you start VB and the guest, the USB
will be "unmounted" on the host and "mounted" on the guest.
After stopping the guest, the USB device "returns" the host (in most cases
If not, simply unplug/plug the USB device.

Hope this helps, Fritz

Hi Fritz!

Danke! Thank you so much for responding. I already started to think about discarding the idea of VB if USB is not really supported.

OK, so I followed your instructions. This is what happened:

When starting the guest (WinXP) booting took a long time, then I was blessed by a blue screen followed by a restart. (Unfortunately until now I did not succeed in getting the appropriate VBoxManage line to work, the one described in the manual, which holds the blue screen. Something in the syntax is still wrong.)

Maybe the bluescreen was due to the enabling of IO APIC? See below.

Anyway, I continued your instructions and tried an external USB harddrive. It was shown under "Devices" to be held by the guest. But then a message in the taskbar appeared informing me that some USB device was not properly working and not recognized. Accordingly the drive did not appear in Windows explorer.

I do have a question regarding

5. Check "IO APIC"

Now this is interesting. When I googled I found one other hint pointing that direction here http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=1127 and revived that old thread, but was not lucky in getting a response. As an exception from the rule I'll quote myself :

May I ask how you achieved the enabling of the IO APIC? Did you reinstall the windows guest? The manual says enabling this option after installation does not have any effect, as the hal will be changed by nothing but a new installation of the os. So is that what you did?

Unfortunately I installed WinXP with that option disabled. I had pondered about what I should do. But the recommendations of the manual seemed to be in favour of not enabling it. Does that mean I have to reinstall the guest?
I already hat to telephone to MS to get an activation code for the installation. I have no idea what happens to activation if you reinstall (not repair) Windows on a VM and its virtual hardware . Do you know? Or anyone else?

So, do I have to reinstall Windows (and the software already installed) to enable IO APIC as the manual suggests?

Thx again,
Xenia

Hi Xenia,

intially, i defined the guest (a Vista in my case) without enabling the "IO APIC" feature and run into the well known problem.
I also read the hint you refered, saying you have to reinstall the guest.
I did NOT reinstall the guest, just enabled "IO APIC", to see what happens and the USB device works......

Thats all i have done.

Sorry, i cannot answer your MS question ....

Cheers, Fritz

Have run into a similar problem in some ways to the one described. I have followed the steps you enumerated and when I start the guest, a Win XP Pro, on my Gutsy host, I get an error message as follows:

"Failed to attach USB device (device) to the virtual machine"
"Not permitted to open USB device, check usbfs options"

I don't know where the usbfs options can be accessed, and would appreciate any help you can provide here.

The Win XP Pro guest accesses one DVD drive, but not the second. Shared Folders and the Internet connection work perfectly, but I haven't been able to access the USB ports.

Hi!

Frisal wrote:intially, i defined the guest (a Vista in my case) without enabling the "IO APIC" feature and run into the well known problem.
I also read the hint you refered, saying you have to reinstall the guest.
I did NOT reinstall the guest, just enabled "IO APIC", to see what happens and the USB device works......

Thats all i have done.

Lucky one

I could imagine that Vista maybe comes with a different hal that supports io apic anyway. Just speculating...

Anyway, your procedure of adding the USB filter before starting the machine by right-clicking makes the hold-function more stable. But there is still no drivers for my harddisk.

@erdley
Have you tried that procedure. Together with enabling IO APIC it seems those message no longer appear. But VB has still no drivers for my harddisk which does not need any

Could it be that VBox does not yet support USB 2?

Good night fellows,

Xenia

Hi

@Xenia

i attached successfully an USB-Stick and an USB-Harddisk, both USB 2.0 !

@erdley

sorry, i have no experience with Linux, i run XP as host and Vista as guest. But usbfs sounfs like USB filesystem ??? mayby an authoritation problem ? Found some hints like :
http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-430735.html

Cheers, Fritz

Thanks, Fritz, for your helpful hint.

I have gone down that path before, however, and the problem is that my Gutsy Linux host has no etc/fstab file or location. Maybe this is a hint that I have a more basic problem.

Thanks again,

Hal

I finally solved this problem by using gedit to find the /etc/fstab file. Thanks for all your help and suggestions. I believe my basic problem is one of not yet really understanding the ins and outs of Linux. I have now access to at least one of my USB ports, although I don't know whether or not it is USB 1 or 2.

Hi Xenia,

YOu were able to connect to USB in VirtualBox? If yes let mne know the procedure....

Fritz,

I will be great help to me... if you can help me out...

Regards,
Micky

I had this situation with a Win XP host / Linux Fedora guest.

Eventually (and we all know how long that takes) I resolved it by
1) setting VB to capture the Sentinel device (Vendor 04B9, Product 8000)
2) start VB
3) after plugging the USB dongle in, using Windows Device Manager to de-install the Sentinel USB driver
4) after starting the VM, VB's Device, USB list showed the dongle twice - once without the tick and once with.
5) the guest now had use of the dongle.

But I have to do this every time as the Sentinel USB driver keeps getting installed.

James

JamesCampbell wrote: But I have to do this every time as the Sentinel USB driver keeps getting installed.

In this case, i delete the driver file on the windows host
This is the only way i found to "uninstall" the driver and avoid any new install.