How can I make my Virtualbox Vista see my USB device (iPad)?

Solution 1:

This is a working procedure for iDevices so that they are visible to iTunes running in a Windows XP guest on an Ubuntu 12.04 LTS host:

1. Install the "Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack" to match your VirtualBox version. https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads
2. Ensure that your user account is in the "vboxusers" group. You may need to logout/login again to pickup the group change. In the worst case you may need to reboot.
3. Connect your USB device.
4. Confirm that you can see your USB device via the lsusb command.
5. Confirm that you can also see your USB device via the VBoxManage list usbhost command. You cannot add a working Filter in VirtualBox until this is working.
6. In VirtualBox, go to the Settings of your guest, USB section, and add a Filter for your USB device.
7. Start your guest and confirm that it can see your device.

Solution 2:

Getting USB devices working is notoriously tricky with VirtualBox - but surprisingly it isn't too bad as long as you follow these steps:

1) Make sure you configure your guest with the proper USB filters. These can be done in the properties for the VM, under the USB section. You will want to add a filter for you iPad, which you can do easy enough with the plus button and let it fill in the details. The important step here is that you clear out ALL the fields except the Name, Vendor ID and Product ID.

2) At this point you need to shutdown the guest (if it is running), and reboot the host. I am not sure why, probably something to do with registering the driver or something wacky. Make sure you iPad is NOT plugged in at this time.

3) After rebooting the host, fire up the guest you have running and connect your iPad. With any luck VirtualBox will see the device and grab it before your host takes it over. If not, you can try to associate it, though chances are you need to repeat steps 1 & 2 and make sure you have the right values populated in the filter details.

It goes without saying that you will need the extensions pack installed to get the USB support.

Solution 3:

I followed the same steps, and guest Windows(XP) was able to see the iPad as a camera device, but iTunes couldn't see the device. I doubted that it was because USB2.0 support wasn't enabled from the USB ports configurations of my virtual machine in VirtualBox.

I enabled it (USB 2.0 EHCI Controller checkbox under ports->USB) and had to install the VirtualBox extension package, and then it worked like a charm.