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varnk
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Workstation 16 USB Autoconnect Issues

I am running VMWare Workstation 16.1.2.  Having some really weird handling of Auto Connect. 

When I connect a USB Device, I am presented with a prompt asking me whether to connect the device to my desktop PC or a virtual machine.  There is also an checkbox option to remember the current selection.  The problem I am having is that once I select the option to remember the selection, there is no way to un-change the remember option for some devices.  Certain devices in my Removable Devices List have a selection to "Forget Connection Rule", but that doesn't get shown for devices that I told it to remember.  In fact, the "Forget Connection Rule" shows up on devices that I never told it to remember in the first place, yet devices that I told it to remember do not have that "Forget Connection Rule" listed.  

Seems like Workstation is getting confused as to which devices have the "remember" option selected and which ones do not.  How do I undo the "remember" selection if VMWare Workstation won't list the "forget" option for USB devices that had "remember" turned on?

 

3 Replies
badvox
Contributor
Contributor

Same issue but actually worse.  I was onsite working with my laptop and apparently clicked connect on a device by mistake. That device cannot be forgotten and rule cannot be undone.  In my case that device is the Intel Bluetooth for my laptop which totally kills my keyboard and mouse connections.  

How can I have vmware forget that rule?   Documnetation does not help at all in this situation. 

 

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varnk
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

VMWare doesn't seem to have much interest in fixing this issue for some reason.  I have found a workaround.  It isn't ideal, but it seems to work.  You can go to the C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware USB Arbitration Service path and delete the usbarb.rules file.  That will delete all of the saved USB rules.  Or, if you are more ambitious you can try to edit the file and remove the individual USB entries that you want VMWare to "forget".  Keep in mind that this file is protected, so you will need to have elevated administrator rights to delete it or edit it.

Ultimately, VMWare really needs to fix this issue because it is quite annoying and as you have seen it can be quite disastrous if you accidentally click on "Remember always" for a particular device.  

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badvox
Contributor
Contributor

Thank you, I was just coming to put a link to that as well 🙂  

Cheers

 

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