virtualbox.org

Hello,
Have VirtualBox installed on Ubuntu 16.04 host. VM is Windows 10. Having trouble getting USB on the guest working. Installed the Extension pack. In the VM control panel went to USB settings and enabled USB 2.0. It shows up enabled. Added a new filter and left everything blank. As soon as I start the Windows guest the USB setting get grayed out. And the guest does not see any devices. Have plugged the USB into the Ubuntu machine and ejected it. Tried several things that seem to have worked for others.
Any help would be appreciated.
Will admit this is my first experience at VirtualBox. The Windows machine seems to up and running just fine.

Have you added your user name to the vboxusers group on the host?

Note: permission changes require a minimum of log off and back in or a reboot to complete.

That made a difference. It now sees the USB device. But in the settings window it still shows the USB controller grayed out

M123E2 wrote:As soon as I start the Windows guest the USB setting get grayed out.

Just like on a real computer, you cannot change hardware (and it's settings) while the computer is running.

When Window VM is off under USB settings the USB controller is enabled. When the Windows VM is powered on it shows the name of the USB device but the enabled boxes are grayed out. Have gone back and forth several times and it doesn't seem to change.

Type id in the hosts terminal and post the results here.

Also post the guests log file ( as an attachment ). Right click on the guest in the Main Manager then click show log. Save and post as an attachment. Compress if it is too large to post.

jared@jared-Linux:~$ id
uid=1000(jared) gid=1000(jared) groups=1000(jared),4(adm),24(cdrom),27(sudo),30(dip),46(plugdev),113(lpadmin),128(sambashare),129(vboxusers)
jared@jared-Linux:~$

Everything looks fine so let's try a few things. Remove any filter that you have set and do this with the guest shut down. It may not hurt to start the host again just to be sure that everything is back to square one. Now start the guest and wait until it is fully booted, then click the device tab at the top and go to usb. Select the device you want to use and see if it actually attaches to the guest. At this point open a command window and type the following then post the results as an attachment:

From the hosts terminal type VBoxManage showvminfo <VM Name> --details and post here. Replace <VM Name> with the actual name of the VM. Use " " if the name has a space in it.

Here are the results

This shows Toshiba TransMemory is attached to the guest. So it appears that the guest is where your difficulty is. Search for "0x6545" and there are a lot of different issues that you can check. Also do you have another USB device that you can test to see if it works?

So it seems to be working now. Found an article on How-To-Geek: https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/31726/m ... th-ubuntu/
I thought I had already installed the Guest Additions. Maybe not or maybe is just needed to be re-installed. It is working. Had a couple of times when it hung up the mouse on both the Windows Guest and the Ubuntu Host.
It's kind of cool - have a USB drive from work that is encrypted with McAfee Endpoint Encryption (Windows) and was able to open that up on the Windows Guest.

Thanks for the help.

M123E2 wrote:I thought I had already installed the Guest Additions.

I'm sorry, but the Guest Additions are not required for this. Neither the article talks about them. So, I'm not quite sure about it's applicability in your case.

Also the referenced article is from 2010 and talks about VirtualBox 3.2 so it is way too old.

On a technical level, it's still quite valid. I guess the devs got the process right a long time ago...