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Install drivers in guest VM

cleo43
Explorer
Explorer
To clear the air in another thread that has been closed.
The poster said that you have to install the device driver in the host to make the guest's device work, which is not correct. If I can do it (find out the driver for the host) why bother having a guest VM in the first place ?
I am sorry not to make thing clear. All you need is to make the guest regconize the device (printer, scanner, GPS ...) as an USB device, install driver in the GUEST OS to make things work again.
2 REPLIES 2

cleo43
Explorer
Explorer
Using a different Host OS like Linux most likely will get you round the difficulties of a USB3 only port as long as you have a driver for that USB3 port.

The devices are passed to the guest as USB2 (VirtualBox).

Gdetrailer
Explorer III
Explorer III
Depending on your Host OS and USB hardware on your PC, this can be a bit complicated and may or may not work in all situations especially with Win10 which is a whole nuther beats to deal with.

HERE is a question about what you are asking in Win10 Host.

Keep in mind that question was from 2016 when system boards came standard with Legacy USB2.0 ports and hubs hardware plus a USB3 port. Fast forward to 2018-19 and many MB manufacturers started stripping out the Legacy USB2 ports and Hubs hardware and the system boards now have only USB3 ports..

And just because you might have a white USB port on these newer PCs, it does not mean you have real USB2 hardware.. I have a few newer MBs which have no internal USB2 hardware but still has a couple of white USB ports..

This starts a whole new problem because there is no native USB2 ports and hubs and you are now depending 100% on the USB3 drivers in Win10 to emulate backwards compatibility of USB1/2.. Win10 in this case uses a driver called Standard USB3.0/3.1 eXtensible Host Controller which serves as the port and hub driver. These are what I would call as "soft USB ports" and not real hardware which fouls up things when it comes to older USB legacy devices that may not have a new firmware update so Win10 can recognize the device.

The USB1/2 emulation from USB3 only ports is often NOT "compatible" with OLDER HARDWARE like printers and scanners and the Win10 drivers block and ignore that device (scanners and printers I have found are especially a problem with USB3 only ports).

If your Host blocks and shuts down the device on the USB3 port it is connected to, your Guest is going to have a very difficult time making the connection.. Not only when this happens, it often shuts down ALL of the USB ports (can't tell you how many times I lost USB mouse and keyboard during this process), could even be the USB3 driver crashing.. Pressing the power button was all I could do once I lost all USB devices like keyboard and mouse.

Older MBs with native USB2 ports and hubs in theory are not as much as a problem.. In fact I added an PCI-e Legacy USB2 port card to a Win10 PC to solve the issue I had with my Win10 randomly working or not working with an older printer/scanner..

Ironically OLDER OS like Win7 had zero issues recognizing the older printer/scanner using the same MB, but for Win7 there was a specific USB3 eXtensible Host Controller driver which was not written by or supplied by Microsoft, it was written and supplied by Intel specifically for that MB (the MB has Intel chipset)..

Win10, Intel supplied MS with the bare metal basic GENERIC USB3 driver, MS did their thing to the driver and the problem is their driver which you cannot override.

While MS most likely will call this a "feature", I call it broken..

My fix was to add in a dedicated USB2 port hardware, but if you have say a laptop and not a desktop like I was working on, you are pretty much up the creek.. Not to mention, Older legacy USB2 port cards are as scarce as hens teeth now.. I was able to purchase the only one I could find for a spare and won't be long and even that supply will dry up..

Using a different Host OS like Linux most likely will get you round the difficulties of a USB3 only port as long as you have a driver for that USB3 port.