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I installed the VMware tools within Mac. Since then any USB external storage drive that was once recognized is now not recognized. In Driver Manager I receive this message unknown device.

I been trying to tackle this issue and I have not found a solution to it. Everything works perfect when I loaded Mac OS Lion on VMware Workstation. But now my plug and play devices and USB storage bays are not recognized. I think it happen after I installed the VMware tools within with Mac or there is an issue with VMware drivers. What should I do to go about this without disturbing my current state of Windows. My keyboard and mouse are working fine but all other USB devices and external devices are not. I receive an Unknown device when I plug in a external hard drive via USB ports in Windows or Mac.

Does anyone know how I can fix this?

Simon
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Jackie Moon
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    "Unknown device" where? as a dialog box? What is your host? What is your guest? I'm very confused. – jnovack Apr 05 '13 at 13:54
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    it may have something to do with the virtual machine "takeing" usb devices for itself, try looking in wmware settings for options regarding how wmware should treat usb connections – flagg19 Jun 07 '13 at 15:32

3 Answers3

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In VMware Worklstation 15 player, click the down arrow next to Player in upper left corner of VM window and hover on Removable Devices then remove the checkmark next to any device that you want to return to the host.

No need to reboot guest or host.

DW

Dee Wolf
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you might have added other USB driver by installing VMware tools which are needed for driver visualization, so all you need to do is disabling the new installed USB drivers then reboot,

Ps: don't forget to re-enable them when using VMware Tools.

Tech Geek
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    Can you explain how would disabling and re-enabling resolve the issue ? – clhy Nov 11 '15 at 07:02
  • No!My solution is to disable the new USB driver to not result in a conflict between them,but you'll need the new installed driver by VmWare to use USB virtualization feature in the virtual machine. – Tech Geek Nov 17 '15 at 20:53
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I run a Windows 7 VM on MacOS host, and I had to change the selection in VMware Tools from USB 3.0 to USB 2.0 - the reason being Windows 7 on VMware only supports a single specific chipset (not the one in my Mac!) with USB 3.

So, if you are running Win 7, try changing to USB 2.

Matt
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