VM Ware Player

[Redroger]

USB Printer and A drive, both of which it sees and I can use, a webcam, integral with the computer, and a USB hard drive, both of which it doesn't see. A thought occurs to me, when I checked the USB host controllers etc. yesterday, all the driver roll backs were greyed out. As the computer is fairly new, bought 1st May this year, does this mean that the drivers have not yet been updated? Also would it be helpful or possibly dangerous if I were to update each driver in turn and see whether doing this cured the problem?

[RJ_Paton]

The drivers would have been set up as part of a drive cloning operation and would be as up to date as that operation was.

If you remove or update the USB drivers you stand the chance of removing their functionality from your machine - however from reading the VMware website it would appear that they prefer their own drivers be installed.

as to webcams

New to Workstation 5.0    ...... VMware recommends that you have at least a 2GHz Intel-class machine to use this technology.

Vmware Knowledgebase


Personally I must admit to only dabbling in Virtual PC's although I have 2 "machines" set up, XP and Linux (mint) I use them only lightly and haven't explored too deeply into attaching all of my gear

[Redroger]

Thanks Falkryn, For the time being at any rate I think it safest to leave well alone. One thing puzzles me slightly, these KB articles refer to Workstation 5 etc. I am using the free VM Ware player. Will they still apply, and is this the reason for the differences in USB drivers I referred to in reply No.5 above?

[RJ_Paton]

I have only dabbled with their software but decided to go a different path for virtualisation. It is possible that the free VM Player could be viewed as a cut down version of their Workstation software adjusted to suit its own particular specifications. Given that they have only recently introduced full USB support into their Workstation software environment it may be some time before it becomes available in the free player version.

[Redroger]

Good pointy, I think that is very probably the reason for the problems I have experienced, a little galling though when I stopped using Virtual Box because they now have a problem with USB recognition they have been unable to fix for over 12 months, which seems peculiar to 64 bit windows. It did not affect me on my old machine, but when I updated I found I had the problem of no USB, so I switched to VM apparently to no avail; however it may not matter as there is a transfer file which can be set up to transfer files between the virtual and real machines. If I get that working then I can wait for them to catch up with USB.