virtualbox.org

Hey everyone. This is my first post on the forum. Anyways, I would appreciate if anyone could help me out with this issue. I have a virtual lab for my business, we are running several linux distro's as VM's and a few windows VM's as well. I installed the latest version of Virtualbox and also installed the add-on package and the guest editions just fine on all VM's. The problem that I am having is that If I plug in two of the exact same usb devices, it seems that virtualbox does not know how to tell the difference between the two. So essentially, I can only run one of those devices. For example, I plug in 2 usb devices, they will show up as "NETGEAR WNA1100 USB [008]" and then below that, it would show another entry of the exact same information however the ID number is the same [008] or whatever it is. So instead of having its own ID number, I am assuming that virtualbox thinks they are the same exact thing even though in reality, they are 2 separate devices. I can go to one machine and connect the device no problem, but if I go to a second machine and attempt to connect the other 2nd USB, it wont connect and eventually will give me a busy error.

So that is my issue, I was using VMware before, and I was able to connect all of my USB devices to any and all VM's with no issues at all. Except for now, I am wanting to try virtualbox.

It's actually you who tells VirtualBox how to distinguish devices, by providing a sufficiently narrow filter in VM settings / USB. If the device itself doesn't provide any distinguishing feature then of course they simply can't be told apart.