Mounting USB Card Reader
Posted: 25. Apr 2011, 18:28
I have been searching for a while on how to get my virtual Debian Machine to mount my USB microSD card reader and I've discovered a way to make it work... I'm just not sure why it does...?
While my virtual Debian machine is running I would click on the "Devices" drop-down-> "USB Devices" and I could see all the USB devices currently connected to my Windows machine. Items that were already connected had a "State:" of "Busy" which I think means that they are already being used by Windows (but my external keyboard and mouse also appear on this list and were usable within the guest and host machines... fairly seamlessly I might add), other items that i plugged in since the VM was started appeared as "Captured" but didn't have the check box next to them. When I would click on one of these devices, including my card reader, I would get and error message pop-up reading: "Failed to attach the USB device Unknown device to the virtual machine nadeb." Even if VB knew the name of the device in the drop down list, this pop-up/error would always say "Unknown device". I tried several things I found while searching online and came across a suggestion to create a fake/empty USB device prior to starting the VM and that worked once (but after restarting the VM that proved to not be a long-term solution).
Eventually I just started trying different things and thought it was strange that I could use my external keyboard and mouse even though they didn't have a checkbox next to them on the devices list and didn't appear to be "Captured" by the VM. So I clicked on my USB keyboard and tried to mount that to see what would happen. Windows then sensed a change in the device configuration and started a Hardware installation wizard (which I closed). Then... a new drive appeared on my Debian Desktop!: It finally mounted my microSD card! Checking the Device list it appeared with a checkbox next to it. Interestingly, my external keyboard ceased to work on either Debian or Windows as it was trapped in some sort of OS-less land. But I shut-down my VM and rebooted Windows and my keyboard came back. Restarting my VM the keyboard still worked, and when I plugged in my USB card reader, the drive mounted immediately: I didn't have to select it from my Device list.
So there you have it! Try to confuse the parts of your VM USB that work and maybe it will jog it's ability to capture other USB devices that it is having trouble fully capturing.
Anyone understand why this works?
-Nick
Details:
VB ver: 4.0.4
Host Machine: MS Windows XP, SP 3
Guest Machine: Debian 5.0.8
While my virtual Debian machine is running I would click on the "Devices" drop-down-> "USB Devices" and I could see all the USB devices currently connected to my Windows machine. Items that were already connected had a "State:" of "Busy" which I think means that they are already being used by Windows (but my external keyboard and mouse also appear on this list and were usable within the guest and host machines... fairly seamlessly I might add), other items that i plugged in since the VM was started appeared as "Captured" but didn't have the check box next to them. When I would click on one of these devices, including my card reader, I would get and error message pop-up reading: "Failed to attach the USB device Unknown device to the virtual machine nadeb." Even if VB knew the name of the device in the drop down list, this pop-up/error would always say "Unknown device". I tried several things I found while searching online and came across a suggestion to create a fake/empty USB device prior to starting the VM and that worked once (but after restarting the VM that proved to not be a long-term solution).
Eventually I just started trying different things and thought it was strange that I could use my external keyboard and mouse even though they didn't have a checkbox next to them on the devices list and didn't appear to be "Captured" by the VM. So I clicked on my USB keyboard and tried to mount that to see what would happen. Windows then sensed a change in the device configuration and started a Hardware installation wizard (which I closed). Then... a new drive appeared on my Debian Desktop!: It finally mounted my microSD card! Checking the Device list it appeared with a checkbox next to it. Interestingly, my external keyboard ceased to work on either Debian or Windows as it was trapped in some sort of OS-less land. But I shut-down my VM and rebooted Windows and my keyboard came back. Restarting my VM the keyboard still worked, and when I plugged in my USB card reader, the drive mounted immediately: I didn't have to select it from my Device list.
So there you have it! Try to confuse the parts of your VM USB that work and maybe it will jog it's ability to capture other USB devices that it is having trouble fully capturing.
Anyone understand why this works?
-Nick
Details:
VB ver: 4.0.4
Host Machine: MS Windows XP, SP 3
Guest Machine: Debian 5.0.8