Using a scanner without drivers in the host OS

[MrProsser]

This is likely a stupid question but I am not very familiar with VirtualBox and have not been able to find an answer to this question. I have used VirtualBox a few times but am not very familiar with how it works. I have an old usb HP scanner, the HP Scanjet 4400c. I dual boot Windows 8.1 and Lubuntu 14.04. My scanner works fine under Lubuntu but there are no drivers available in Windows 8.1. When I am using Windows it is a pain to log out and into Linux just to scan some documents, so I decided to install Lubuntu using VirtualBox (4.3.14) so I can use that whenever I need to use the scanner. However, when I attempted to use the scanner it did not work, no scanner was detected. I was wondering, if I do not have the Windows driver for the scanner, can I still use the scanner under the virtualized Linux installation as long as it is set up correctly in that environment or is it reliant on having the Windows driver when I make use of usb devices in the guest OS?

[mpack]

You understand that you have to tell the VM settings to talk to that scanner, right? That it isn't sufficient to connect the scanner to the host?

What you want to do is potentially possible, but you can't know for sure until you try it. And read everything in the user manual that mentions USB. Particularly how to create device USB filters, and USB in a Linux context.

One tip: a Windows host needs to install a filter driver. So when you first connect the device to a running VM you may get a confusing "new hardware found" dialog. This is not (necessarily) the host trying to grab the device - it is likely to be VirtualBox wanting to install that filter driver, and you must allow it otherwise USB redirection will not work. If you don't see that dialog then something has gone wrong - most likely you have the hosts "Driver Signature Enforcement" feature set at too high a level whereby it silently rejects driver installs it doesn't recognize.

[MrProsser]

Thanks for the reply. I had tried to set up a filter based on the device, found a lot of tutorials and guides that showed how to do this, but once I was in the guest OS it constantly told me that the device was busy. For some reason I do not get new device found messages for anything lately, but I did notice there is now a VirtualBox USB driver installed and when I plug the scanner in I hear an audio cue telling me a device was plugged into the USB, followed by a sound telling me it is no longer plugged in.

However, in the end I was able to get it working after finding a post on here that seems to indicated USB on Windows hosts is kind of broken at the moment. I have no idea how true that is, but by downgrading to 4.2.16 I was immediately able to use the scanner.

[mpack]

I'm not aware that USB has ever been broken on Windows hosts, in any version. Do you have a link?