I have Workstation Pro 12.5.8 and a knowingly bootable (partitioned, successfully boots on a hardware machine) USB drive. All guest VMs recognize it with no problems if booted to Windows or Linux. But the BIOS of any VM doesn't recognize the drive, so I cannot boot a VM from the USB drive.
Some VMs are configured for USB 2.0, some others configured for USB 3.0. No difference. No difference if I power the VM on, then connect the device to the VM, and then issue Ctrl-Alt-Del, or power the VM off, then power it on, and it connects the device automatically.
As I press Esc, BIOS boot menu does not have the "+" sign before the "Removable devices" item. If I enter BIOS Setup and switch to the Boot tab, the "Removable devices" item does not have the "+" sign too.
I cannot use upgrade to 15.x because it has very poor real-time performance and I cannot get a real support from VMware at all.
How to force Workstation to recognize the drive?
