Use the check box beside Automatically connect new USB devices to this virtual machine when it has focus to determine what happens when you plug a new USB device into your host computer. If you clear the check box, new USB devices are connected to the host computer.
Use the VM > Removable Devices menu to connect and disconnect USB devices.
You can use up to two USB devices in your virtual machine if both your host operating system and your guest operating system support USB. Note, for example, that Windows NT and Linux kernels older than 2.2.17 do not support USB.
Although your host operating system must support USB, you do not need to install drivers for your USB devices in the host operating system if you want to use those devices only in the virtual machine.
Only one operating system — host or guest — can have control of a USB device at any one time.
Note: If your device is in use by the host and you try to connect it to the guest using the VM menu, a dialog box appears, informing you that there is a problem connecting to the device.
To disconnect the device from the host, you must unload the device driver. You can unload the driver manually as root (su -) using the rmmod command. Or, if the driver was automatically loaded by hotplug, you can disable it in the hotplug configuration files in the /etc/hotplug directory. See your Linux distribution's documentation for details on editing these configuration files.
A related issue sometimes affects devices that rely on automatic connection (as PDAs often do).
If you have successfully used autoconnection to connect the device to your virtual machine, then experience problems with the connection to the device, take the following steps:
Before unplugging a USB device or using the VM > Removable Devices menu to disconnect it from a virtual machine, be sure it is in a safe state.
You should follow the procedures the device manufacturer specifies for unplugging the device from a physical computer. This is true whether you are physically unplugging it, moving it from host to virtual machine, moving it between virtual machines or moving it from virtual machine to host.
This is particularly important with data storage devices (a Zip drive, for example). You may lose data if you move a data storage device too soon after saving a file and the operating system has not actually written the data to the disk.
If you are adding a new USB controller, click Add to install the device.
To remove an existing USB controller, select that controller, then click Remove.
Click OK to save the configuration and close the virtual machine settings editor.
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