Cannot connect USB devices

[daniellouwrens]

Hi

I have Windows x86 as a guest running on Virtualbox running on a Windows Ultimate 64 system and cannot connect my music recording devices and printer to the guest system through usb.

The devices have no 64 bit drivers but I have the 32 bit drivers and have loaded them onto the guest system, but when I attach the devices to he usb ports nothing happens.
I have tried to "activate" usb on Virtualbox but do not understand the requirements and have read the help file but do not understand that either.
Is there a tutorial that show hows to setup Virtualbox to recognise the usb inputs.

Thanks

Daniel

[tjn]

First, on the USB Details of your guest on the VirtualBox interface, enable USB, USB 2.0 then add a new filter -- the USB icon with the blue dot. You'll have something like "1 New Filter" appear with a checked box. This will allow all usb devices to pass through to the guest. Then start your guest. Once it's up, right click the USB control on the footer of the window or navigate through Devices->USB Devices and select the device you wish to virtually "plug in" to your guest OS. You might catch some "USB Activity" blips on the footer of the window and the device should be available within a few seconds. I used this to access a patriot memory thumb drive from my Ubuntu 10.04 guest.

[irondesk29]

I have a question that I believe is related to the original post. I have a couple of USB devices (an older scanner and a micro-controller devel board) that don't have drivers for Windows 7 (my host OS). Is it possible to use these USB devices via a guest OS (XP) without having any working drivers on the host OS? My intuition tells me that if the host OS can't talk to the USB device, then the Guest won't be able to either. Is this right?

I attached a screen-shot of what it looks like on my system. When I tell the guest to attach to the scanner (Epson Perfection), I throws a "USB Device is busy with previous request".

[mpack]

My intuition tells me that if the host OS can't talk to the USB device, then the Guest won't be able to either. Is this right?

In general that would be true, but the situation with USB is slightly different. USB support is layered, and the communications backbone layer can be provided by the host without the host necessarily understanding what the application layer comms is for. So, in principle the idea being discussed should work.

[irondesk29]

Thanks mpack, that's encouraging.

I've been looking around for an example of how this is done and I can't find anything. Has anyone ever done this before? As you can see from my earlier post, VB knows the device is there but can't add it to the guest OS. The host OS can't seem to find the right VirtualBox USB driver for this device. Is there a step I'm missing?

Thanks in advance.

[mpack]

Lots of people have come on the site and asked about interfacing a guest with USB printers, scanners etc. Sadly, it's rare for one of these to be considerate enough to come back afterwards and tell us if it worked - for the benefit of future users. Perhaps you might break that trend?

[saturnine]

Lots of people (including myself) have trouble with USB on VB. Perhaps the reason they don't come back is because they haven't managed to get it working and have nothing to report?

(Personally, I've had USB working on a Linux host but never on a Windows host)

Paul

[Perryg]

I spent the better part of a year trying to get USB to work reliably on a Windows host. What I found out was there was a conflict with the USB root hubs. After uninstalling everything USB related and running VirtualBox I found it worked as advertised. I started installing all of the devices one at a time and found it was my HP photo smart printer. It has card readers in it and they were installing and causing my problems. Funny thing is after I had everything working and then installed the printer drivers (without the bloat ware that comes on the CD) everything continued to work just fine.

[daniellouwrens]

First, on the USB Details of your guest on the VirtualBox interface, enable USB, USB 2.0 then add a new filter -- the USB icon with the blue dot. You'll have something like "1 New Filter" appear with a checked box. This will allow all usb devices to pass through to the guest. Then start your guest. Once it's up, right click the USB control on the footer of the window or navigate through Devices->USB Devices and select the device you wish to virtually "plug in" to your guest OS. You might catch some "USB Activity" blips on the footer of the window and the device should be available within a few seconds. I used this to access a patriot memory thumb drive from my Ubuntu 10.04 guest.

Hi

This worked, thanks for your help.

Cheers

Daniel

[mpack]

Perhaps the reason they don't come back is because they haven't managed to get it working and have nothing to report?

"Tell us if it worked" includes "not working" as a potential outcome. Telling us that they are giving up on getting it working is something to report.

[irondesk29]

Well I had some success last night. Let me just say that the USB support is disgustingly intermittent, at least on my machine. I was able to install my Epson scanner on Guest OS without host drivers. Below is a list of what I did to get it working once. Even if I repeat these steps, it doesn't always work...

Again, my host OS is Windows 7 x64, guest OS is XP SP3.

Plugged in scanner, host tried to install driver but couldn't find one.
In device manager, manually selected VirtualBox USB driver (C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\drivers\USB\device\VBoxUSB.inf) for scanner
Started VB
In guest OS settings, I looked at the USB device list that is shown when you click on the button to add a specific USB device filter (green plus sign). I check to see if this list looked correct, sometimes it seems to contain leftover devices if I uninstall or unplugged a USB device. My list contained the scanner and 3 unknown devices.
Made a catch all USB filter for guest OS
Started guest OS
Selected USB scanner (attached to guest OS) while booting up, seemed to do nothing
Waited for guest boot up to finish
Started selecting other unknown USB devices, this seemed to "wake up" the USB pass-through mechanism
Host OS then recognized a new USB device and added an additional VirtualBox USB device to host device manager (leaving two VirtualBox USB devices listed)
At this time, guest OS attached to the scanner and worked.
Restarted guest OS and the scanner was still attached and still worked.
Shutdown guest OS, started up again, and device was listed but not attached.
Told guest to attach to scanner, the host found new VirtualBox USB device (leaving two in device manager), and guest OS froze.
Killed VBoxSVC in host's task manager and guest OS came back to life but with no USB devices listed for attaching.

Frequently, when I try to select my USB device for attachment, it errors with "USB device busy with previous request." When this happens, I kill all VB process on the host and try again. Many times, when I start the guest OS again and try to attach my USB device, it will act like it's doing nothing the first time I click my device, then throw a "USB device busy" error the second time I try to select it. Any one else experience this?

It seems to me that the host's VBoxSVC process is responsible for USB devices. I still don't have a clear understanding of what is happening (or what is suppose to happen) behind the scenes. I'm going to spend some more time on this later and see if I can produce a more reliable result. If anyone has anything to add, please do.

[mpack]

I suspect it will only work reliably (or at least as reliable as it gets) if you attach the USB device after starting the VM. It's also possible that there is 2-way comms going on between driver and printer, and this is sensitive to timing latencies caused by virtualisation. That would be printer/driver dependent.

[irondesk29]

I suspect it will only work reliably (or at least as reliable as it gets) if you attach the USB device after starting the VM.

Is it possible to attach the USB device to a guest OS before starting the VM? By "attach" I didn't mean "plug in," I meant select the USB device from the list provided by VirtualBox by right clicking on the USB icon on the bottom right corner of the windowed guest OS.

[mpack]

Well, I did mean "plug in to the host" when I said "attach".

[barrymah]

First, on the USB Details of your guest on the VirtualBox interface, enable USB, USB 2.0 then add a new filter -- the USB icon with the blue dot. You'll have something like "1 New Filter" appear with a checked box. This will allow all usb devices to pass through to the guest. Then start your guest. Once it's up, right click the USB control on the footer of the window or navigate through Devices->USB Devices and select the device you wish to virtually "plug in" to your guest OS. You might catch some "USB Activity" blips on the footer of the window and the device should be available within a few seconds. I used this to access a patriot memory thumb drive from my Ubuntu 10.04 guest.

I'm late in here, I am amazed that there are so many posts on USBs and printers and VM...., maybe I shouldn't be?

I have been trying the various 'blank filter, plug in an plug out' options suggested but as yet no luck. After reading the above post I tried the procedure and found, on right clicking the USB control, the following "unknown device 10F1:1A2A [1815]" and state:busy What does this mean? is the USB blocked by this?? BTW I haven't (yet) connected anything to the USB on the host. I removed all the devices that were on the VM USB option and added a 'new filter'

Later Edit - after few minutes and after plugging in a Canon 9000 series printer the 'devices' tab showed a camera and the Canon as devices....! I unclicked the camera and a box came up saying it was installing software for a Toshiba webcam...!! Nothing else showed. Now I cannot click or right click the usb symbol or the devices tab, nothing appears - there is a very small square showing when I click the tab or roll the mouse over the usb symbol. Bizarre??

Later Edit - question - my guest OS doesn't show any availability of a USB port when I look to add a printer using the CD....do I need to add one and how?

I have a Windows 7 Host on Toshiba Satellite L650 with a XP pro SP3 guest. I am primarily using it to run a VERY old version of Quicken (2001!!) - I want to reach financial year end and then move on to something that runs under W7.

TIA, Barry