VMware Workstation 7 SmartCard USB error during guest boot

[gege55]

Hello,

I am using VMware Wokstation 7 with Windows XP as Host and Window XP as guest.

The host has a USB SmartCard Reader connected. When the guest system boots I get

The Service "Smart Card" is preventing this device from being stopped.

In the guest side I get The connection for the USB device "SCM Reflex USB v.2 Smart Card Reader" was unsuccessful. The VMWare Arbitrator returned error code 9.

When the guest is ready I can't use the SmartCard on my host.

How can I remap USB storage only.

Thanks in advance for your help

Gerard

[grossag]

This is because the Microsoft "Smart card" service marks all smart card readers as "in use" because it is managing them. There are two ways to fix this:

1) Launch services.msc, navigate to the "Smart card" service, and click Stop. Then when you redirect the smart card into the guest, you can Start the service again. However stopping and starting this service sometimes causes it to lose track of the smart card state when it is eventually replugged back into the host, although it has never caused my smart card to lose any of its state.

2) Use the shared smart card device instead of the exclusive aka passthrough one. There are two ways we allow people to redirect smart cards to the guest: (a) via standard USB redirection which only allows it to be plugged into one place at a time and (b) via our own type of redirection that allows it to be shared. I would recommend (b) if it works for you. If you can't find it, I have attached the two possible smart card icons you should see in the bottom of the Workstation frame. The left one is (a) and the right one is (b).