USB license keys and VDI

[mreferre]

Not sure if anyone of you on this board has ever been facing the challenge of "exporting" into a remote XP guest OS (accessed via RDP) a USB license key installed locally.

From a I would be pretty flexible and I could allow to have from the thinnest of the thin clients available all the way to a standard PC with a standard XP image. The problem I have right now is that, from this client device (whatever that be) I need to open an RDP session into an XP guest on VMware which will run an application that (unfortunately) requires and check the presence of local a USB license key.

While I would ideally like not to have any additional device on the desk I understand that I could have "IP-enabled USB devices" that, through an appropriate software installed into any XP guest could be mapped and transparently being considered local USB devices.

The one thing important to notice is that this USB key doesn't show up as a regular "removable disk" otherwise RDP would have been able to map it into the remote session, no problem.

So in summary, if you have heard/seen/thought of any solution for a similar scenario please let me know. As I said it would be nice if there is a solution that doesn't require any additional hardware on the desk (this would be my preferred) but if you have heard/seen/thought of other solutions that might work which requires additional hardware .... that would be good as well.

Thanks.

Massimo.

[mreferre]

Most likely you did not copy the proper system drivers in the virtual machine before connecting the USB hub:

http://www.digi.com/pdf/wp_ESXServer_AnywhereUSB.pdf

You have to manually copy the file usbd.sy_ from the Win CD onto your vm. Problem is that the vm does not provide any USB interface so Windows just ignore to install USB support.

Digi has done a great job documenting but I had to use the Lantronix device for some of the digi's product limitations. Credit goes to them for this nice document. Next time I'll make sure we will be able to use one of their devices.

Massimo.

[HKokko]

Grazie mille, Massimo, problem solved.

Now it works flawlessly both fra WinXP and Windows 2003.

I had concluded the problem to be exactly this, but I didn't manage to find a solution, despite quite comprehensive search in VMware forums, Micrsoft knowledge base etc. Now that I knew what I was looking for, a search for "usbd.sys" resulted with several relevant answers in these forums.

The flaw with the UBox driver installation is that it automatically assumes the USBD.SYS driver to already be present. I hope that Lantronix adds a special note for VMware in their product manual, if they don't add a check to the installation routine.

The Lantronix UBox seems to be perfect for our needs, especially with the ability to dedicate USB ports to several separate Virtual Machines from one box, a detail which you also pointed out already earlier.

Thanks again.

Heikki

[TomHowarth]

once again Massimo, you have saved me a load of time reseaching an answer to a question already answered. that is an exceland fix, well done.