USB Glucose Meter Turns On Then Off

[emorgan33]

Hi all,

I would be grateful if someone could help. I've tried searching for a solution to no avail.

My problem is: When plugging in my USB Freestyle Insulinx glucose meter, Windows recognizes it, flashes the autoplay window, then turns off.

I'm running a Windows 7 guest system on Kubuntu 14.04 host system.

I've updated Virtualbox to the latest version.
I've installed the latest versions of Virtualbox Guest Additions also the Virtualbox Extension Pack. USB 2.0 is enabled.

Thank you for your help!

Erik

[emorgan33]

I think it might be a driver issue. The device doesn't show up in Device Manager until it recognizes it. It appears for a half a second as HID Compliant Device with a yellow warning symbol. Then it turns off.

It doesn't even show up when I check "show hidden devices," so I'm a little confused as to how to proceed now.

The meter works fine when plugged into a non-virtualized Windows 7 box.

[scottgus1]

Two possible ideas. One: using the latest version of Virtualbox may not be right for your device. From 4.3.14 onward the developers have been trying to plug a security hole. 4.3.12 is the last version that worked without questioning security issues with programs, drivers, etc., and is still OK to use if you're sure your host OS doesn't have any malware on it, and runs up to Windows 8.1. One way to check this before downgrading is to post a log of the Windows guest starting up, plugging in the glucose meter, waiting for the meter to appear and disappear in Device Manager, unplugging the meter, then shutting down the guest, then zipping the log file and posting it here. Others besides me may be able to look in and see if the security hardening is causing problems.

Second idea: Some USB devices may not run well in a virtual machine. VMs don't have smooth timing for hardware purposes, which may cause time-outs in hardware other than USB disk drives & such. If this meter happens to fall into that category, then there may not be anything you can do to run this device in a virtual machine. You may have to set up a dual-boot of your host instead, or hunt around among friends for an old XP PC that can run the meter.

[emorgan33]

Thank you so much for your time in helping me!

I've decided to just dual-boot into Windows when I need to sync and get reports from my meter.

Thanks again!

Erik

[BillG]

Good idea. It takes a bit longer but should be more reliable. Non standard USB devices are usually bad news for vms.