So far I haven’t had a lot of success getting USB devices working under VirtualBox with XP as the guest. Perhaps it has something to do with Vista being my host?
I’ve been testing using some USB keys, and while VirtualBox seems to know they are present, the message never seems to make it into my guest OS of XP. I intend to keep working with it, USB support would be one of the most compelling things to make me start using VirtualBox as my primary virtualization platform. However, as of right now USB support doesn’t seem quite up to prime time.
Arcane Code 
Unfortuantely, Virtualbox and USB are not happy campers at the moment (regardless of Host OS). “Flakey” is a word that comes to mind but feeding Google still isn’t providing much joy … oh well, at least I have Xen.
I’ve tried goggling for something to fix the same thing (in my case a usb scanner (Canon, CanoScan LiDE 70), that won’t work in anything but winblows – so I figured since I made a VM to run my games I should be able to use it for the scanner as well).
Well, I found two pages with claimed solutions:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=341740 (post #2)
and
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=162084 (post #4)
For the first one I’m not able to find the “VirtuaBox’s USB section” – no clue where it should be!
The second one says to “locate file usbfs: in my case is /sys/bus/usb/drivers” – well I don’t have a file called that, I have a folder but I hardly think that it’s the same thing.
I really like my ubuntu and I don’t want to have to go back to dualboot =’0( But I soooo need my scanner =0S
Just thought that I would share what I’ve found. Perhaps it will work for others =0S
i had the canonscan lide 70 instaled in the newest virtualbox and it worked fine but becouse my remotecontrole (logitech harmony ) did’t work i instaled a older version and now the scanner dous not work
so try the latest virtualbox !!!i would say
Unfortunately, I’ve had the same issues trying to get Virtualbox to recognize external USB devices. I got it to recognize one of 4 external USB hard drives. Additionally I use a microphone/headset combination that goes through a USB soundcard. The sound comes through fine, but the microphone recordings are broken-up. However, this still appears to be the best virtual solution for USB – I’ve read that Microsoft’s Virtual PC does not support USB.
I have been trying to use a virtal machine to fix a bricked Creative nomad zen xtra which requires XP (pre-media center 11, and other updates) I finally got it working using the above mentioned website.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=341740
It is refering to the guest USB settings (with the guest shut down open its settings from the virtual box control window) from there go to the usb area, and add the device to the USB filter list. This will automatically pass that device through tot he guest OS.
jeremy, i’m having a similar issue with my creative (yes, daft, logical, but daft, trying to run sp2 virtually because sp3 is hell for a creative player, but hey, if it works it works)..
i have guest xp on a host xp, not linux. i can ‘mount’ the usb in the guest, but the install dialogue in the guest that pops up is looking to install drivers for “virtualbox usb” not “creative zen” … any ideas? did that happen to you?