virtualbox.org

I've been tasked at our office to create a Linux host with a Windows 7 VM guest. I've actually done several of these this year with no problem. I'm using Slackware64 14.2 and KDE as the host. The VM guest is Windows 7 Professional 64bit and is, in fact, and image restored from a physical WIN7 system. I have two USB devices for this VM that simply will not work. They are a HP 1102w printer and a Fujitsu fi-6130 scanner. I have spent the past 7 days, nearly all day each day working on this. I started with a ASUS M5A78L-M PLUS/USB3 motherboard and AMD FX-8350 CPU. I thought perhaps the USBs were bad on that motherboard so I exchanged it for a M5A78L-M/USB3, same processor.

I've followed instructions in viewtopic.php?f=35&t=82639 multiple time both with default USB settings and removing all but name, vendorID and ProductId. The VM Manager sometimes see and sometimes does not see the USB devices. Moving them to different ports changes visibility -- true for both motherboards. I've started the VM with USB devices plugged in and unplugged. I believe I've followed all tips. The Win7 VM in its physical box had no problems with these devices. The M5A78L-M/USB3 was canabilized from a different, running WIN7 system and had no USB issues. The VirtualBox is up-to-date (5.2.4) with the most recent Extensions and guest additions.

I am hoping someone on this forum has some ideas. I cannot spent much more time on this and will have to stand-down the Linux/VM workstation and put the physical WIN7 back. Is there a known issue with this motherboard? Are these specific devices a problem? What else could it be?

Windows 7 does not have native support for USB-3. You need to install the intel xHCI drivers manually.

MarkFoley wrote:I've followed instructions in viewtopic.php?f=35&t=82639 multiple time

No you didn't. Not all of them at least. Because the last post in that thread list specific and detailed steps that you have to follow if you want to ask for help. Which you didn't...

I've done more testing. I was not entirely sure this was VM/USB related as the printer and scanner would work for a while, then disappear, then after fiddling with VM settings, I'd get them back, only to disappear again after a few days. So, I scratch-installed Linux, then installed the Windows 7 VM from the original installation CD, not from an Acronis image backup. My theory was that perhaps the WIN7 image had, over the years, gotten some USB driver updates or whatnot that possibly messed things up on the Windows side of things. Sure enough, scratch installing Windows 7 fixed the problem. I've now been able to run the USB scanner and printer without issue using this same motherboard. It's a bit unfortuantely the image restore had issues because now I've got to re-install and register various software packages, but oh well. Not sure if posting all the VM logging info would have revealed this problem, but I thought further experimentation worthwhile if it might save precious forum member time.

MarkFoley wrote:not from an Acronis image backup

Hey, you never mentioned that! This is not your typical Win7 installation, this must have had all sorts of software and tweaks accumulated over time, so, yeah, that could be a problem.

Thank you for the feedback! And thank you for marking it as [Solved], but we usually modify the title of the topic, it's easier for search engines and the list of messages to see...