No Usb Connection in VMWare Worksation 16

[Harley51]

When I plug in my USB stick it doesn't automatically connect. I've tried three different USB sticks none of them connect. I tried it on 5 different guests and none of them connect. When I plug them into Windows 10 all work fine. Any help Here?

[RaSystemlord]

In order to investigate, the analyst needs to know the OS'ses of Host and Guest(s). 

There are common things, which you probably know, but just to make sure:

- you cannot connect the stick for Host and Guest at the same time

- you need to have VMware Tools installed on the Guest

- you need to enable USB in VMware VM-settings

[Harley51]

Host = Windows 21H1 Guests = Linuxmint, ubuntu, Fedora and 3 others and none of them work.

you cannot connect the stick for Host and Guest at the same time (Clarify)

- you need to have VMware Tools installed on the Guest (It is)

- you need to enable USB in VMware VM-settings (It is)

[RaSystemlord]

Thanks for the further info. I'm not sure what your "(clarify)" meant? If you were asking for a clarification, it means that USB stick cannot be connected to Host, if you try to see it at a Guest. When VMware is open, it typically asks where you want to connect your USB stick ... if it doesn't, I'm not sure how it needs to be on the Host (perhaps just unmounted).

I'm not an expert in using direct USB devices on the Guest (I have used other methods for file sharing), but since the Guests are Linux, I would start from seeing whether the device is visible to Linux. 

Command is: "lsusb" . If this doesn't work then I don't know what to do next.

If it shows up as a device, I would check if it shows up as a disk.

Command is "sudo fdisk -l" (in *buntu). I have seen that *buntu cannot do a good job in correcting NTFS filesystems ... you may need to do it in Windows - if this is your problem at all.

[Harley51]

File sharing is what I'm basically trying to do. I want to bring Windows .exe files to the guest and try out Wine. Can you explain how you do file sharing.

[RaSystemlord]

OK, I have used the following methods, since I haven't got drag and drop from Desktop to Desktop to work anymore:

- create a share in Windows where you put your files that you want to have in the Guest. Check that the permissions are OK and there is no fire walling limitation (it's a major selection within Windows during install, if shares are allowed at all). If you want to use Browse Network, further down this explanation, you need to enable your Host to be discoverable in the network (in Network Settings).

- enable VM sharing in VM settings and define the share in Windows to be the one, perhaps with a different name for clarity

- boot-up the VM

- connect to that Windows Share with the name in VM that you used. It should be possible in Mint automatically. If it isn't, perhaps you need to install cifs-utils package (former smbfs), which will give Samba server functionality as well.

In this case, with a Windows Host, it should be possible to use networking-OS-specific sharing directly as well. I mean, if you did all this, you should be able to connect using the Windows share name that you had, usually the directory name. I'm not sure which parts of the above you can omit, if you use VMware sharing (probably some).

I normally use a NAT drive in Host networking for file sharing from all Guests to all the other computers in the Host network. If you use NAT networking for a guest, you can connect to any fileserver on the Host network, like a NAS drive. That gives a multipurpose filesharing at the same go and you are not dependent on VMware filesharing functionality and settings - so, you can forget the VM settings for filesharing.

I hope this explains.