Massive USB problems with Nikon Coolscan and 2010 MacBookPro

[licensedtoquill]

I am having massive problems getting a Nikon Coolscan IV recognised on an XP VM running (now) on Sierra with 8 GB of RAM.  When I plug the usb cable in, nothing is recognised.

With a lot of playing around, installing software & drivers, booting reinstalling, reinstalling rebooting ad nauseam, I can finally get the VM to see the scanner, as an IOUSB device in the bar above the OS window (and that connection is automatically connected to the VM, and appears in device manager), but then, NikonScan 4.0.2 just reports that there is no scanner connected.

I got so desperate that I used a few-months old backup of that XP VM on a 2008 Macbook running El Captain with 4GB.  INCREDIBLY, immediately I installed the nikon software, the same VM on the McBook sees the USB connection properly as a USB device, identifies it as an LS40 and connects it to NIkonScan without problems! The scanner then works fine. And I installed Mint 18 Mate on the Macbook, which also see the scanner and lets it work immediately with its internal scan app, even without drivers

So I deleted the whole XP VM from the MBP and replaced it with a carbon copy of today's Macbook xp VM.  Both computers have the latest version of Fusion

With completely unchanged results. No recognition of the scanner whatsoever. (and when I opened a voyager linux VM, it couldn't see the scanner either, and nor could a Windows 7 VM??)

I also get the impression that the older Macbook runs VMs faster and more stably than the newer, faster MBP which has significantly more memory??

Is there something i am missing or is there some reason why the old Macbook Fusion installation can see the scanner while the newer MP cant?

[ColoradoMarmot]

Is it a USB 3 device?  If so, XP won't see it.  You can get around it by putting a USB 2 hub between the device and the computer.

[licensedtoquill]

No, it is usb 1.1

[licensedtoquill]

Not that this is going to make things any easier (especially if no one at VMWare has any ideas on this) but there must be something wrong with this fusion install

I just set up the scanner very easily indeed in XP on a white 2009 macbook running 8.5.3 by following all the normal instructions.  Fusion immediately recognised and properly configured the LS40 as such and immediately controlled it.

[licensedtoquill · Accepted solution]

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This really is an amazing story! I have been having catastrophic problems with my MBP since Fusion 7 and noone could cure it. Sluggishness, constant spinning balls, constant crashes, i had completely given up on ever getting windows 7 to work in anything above Fusion 4.

8-10 hours with Fusion's tech support revealed nothing whatsoever, however many times they pretended to turn off hardware acceleration.

Then this coolscan problem.

Then I concluded over 4-5 hours on the phone with applecare that it was a hardware problem, probably motherboard related, and put in an insurance claim.

But the bloke at applecare did try to say that with this sort of conclusion, there is a one in 1000 chance of a Genius Bar diagnosis off 'something else'

Blow me down! The nice girl at thhe apple store almost immediately diagnosed a DU problem and did a COMMAND-R start to the recoveery partition. There, DU ran, finding all sorts of lost-cluster-like problems.

HEY PRESTO, suddenly the MBP runs like brand new, XP and 7 run perfectly, the scanner is immediately identified as an LS40 (or an IOUSB device, there is no difference), XP immediately sees its new USB connected device and installs drivers.

What is even more baffling is that throughout this process I have upgraded OSX numerous times and run DISK WARRIOR numerous times with out these cataclysmic file system problems either manifesting themselves or even being found!