virtualbox.org

Is it true that before you can access the hosts usb ports you must have a driver for the host to access the usb and then have a driver for the Guest to access the usb port in other words 2 drivers.

Not true. I have USB devices which do not have a driver for my host OS (OSX), but they are recognized by the guests (mainly Windows) and after installing the driver in the guest, I can use it with no problems. In the guest.

It rather depends on definitions, and what the host is. Ironically, it doesn't matter what the guest is - which makes this forum a poor choice.

Tell me the host and I'll move this topic.

The host is windows 8.1 and the guest is xp the reason I make the above statement is.
1. I was told
2 I had to access a serial port in the host and I rang the firm who supply the card and they gave me a driver for windows 8.1 and windows xp and after installing these it worked, which defeats the purpose of a virtual machine.
I have tried to access the host usb ports but no success even thought I have the xp driver's can you tell what is the secret.

Moved to "Windows Hosts".

On Windows hosts VirtualBox needs to install a redirection driver on the host for each USB device, similar to the driver used for bridged networking. That takes care of connecting the USB device to the VM. You then need to install application drivers in the VM, which turns a generic USB device into... whatever. Again, the principle is similar to installing a local driver for a network shared printer - after all USB is just another networking protocol.

You don't need to install application drivers on the host.

Where is this information as I have read the manual and could not find it.

You will not find a discussion of any PC technology in the VirtualBox user manual. You can find that sort of thing using Google.

Section 3.10 of the manual describes how to configure the VM's USB settings.