I have a Sentinel USB dongle required to run an application. When I boot my VM, which is XP Pro, the dongle is not seen....I have to physically remove the dongle and reinsert evey time I boot my virtual guest (VM Workstation 6.5). Any ideas on how this usb key can be read after power up, without having to remove and re-insert?
I have a similar issue. Restarting a guest machine in VMware Workstation 6.5 will not load the driver for the Sentinel USB key but it is connected to the VM (in the Removable Devices list). I have to disconnect and reconnect the USB key (through the Removable Devices menu) then refresh the list in the device manager of the guest. However, I don't encounter this issue if I shutdown the guest rather than restarting. This starting occurring with version 6.5 (6.0 doesn't have this issue).
You can force the VM to always have a specific USB device connected to it (I do that for my SCADA development VMs which need a Sentinel HASP key). Refer to knowledgebase article 1648.
It already has an entry in the vmx file for that (usb.autoConnect.device0 = "path:1/1/0 autoclean:1"). I even tried adding the vid and pid, but still had the same result.
It seems to connect the usb key, but not show up in the device list of the guest.
I enabled usb logging (http://communities.vmware.com/message/760505#760505) and in the vmware.log it listed "USB: Found device" only after a shutdown, not after a reset.
You might want to try and post it on the virtual machine and guest OS Forum. This is designed more for the DFW User Group and Local Invitations.
Tony Gradig
VMUG Leader.
