Remembering USB device connections

[FoxtrotIndia]

Hello, there is a small, but constantly annoying problem I have where I hope that someone here could help me with.

Working with fusion and quite a few USB devices, I found the way that a plugged in USB device is either always going to the host or to the current VM (depending on setting) a bit annoying. Since essentially every USB device I have has its own virtual machine where it should be used, is there a way to configure Fusion to always connect a given device to a given VM machine, if it is running (or tell it to keep its fingers from devices that should be connected to the host).

[admin]

For each virtual machine, when it's shut down (suspended doesn't count), go to Settings > USB Devices and uncheck Automatically connect USB devices). This should keep devices from being automatically connected to the active virtual machine.

I believe Fusion remembers devices which were previously connected to a virtual machine when it was powered off (it will certainly complain if they aren't present) and that Fusion attempts to reconnect them. If I'm wrong about the second part, there are some tweaks you can make to the .vmx config file to control which USB devices are automatically connected. See KB 1648. I don't know if this works if Automatically connect USB devices isn't selected, but I suspect it will and it's worth a try.

[FoxtrotIndia]

Thank you for your pointers.

While not working perfectly in remembering the connections out of the box, without the automatic USB connection option set it still remembers devices so that when you remove it and plug it back in, it still gets reconnected automatically, even if your focus is now in Mac OS or a different VM. At least for me, a much more pleasant experience with USB devices while having multiple VMs running in parallel.