Thinkpads Forum

Hi,

Just taken delivery of my new W510, and all going to plan, she a good machine.

But, I am trying to get my VM USB situation stabilised, I am getting inconsistencies.

the VM recongises & connects to USB devices when in the dock, but when attached to the side ports, does not like it, if the W510 is in the dock, or mobile.

It is almost like the 2x side USB ports are not being released by the W510 to the VM environment.

I am yet to check the rear USB port, this is what I am using for my wireless mouse.

Any ideas? The VM arbitrator error code 4 does not render anythign solid to try.

So it appears that the side ports are USB3, and the rear is USB2. The VM must not be able to read the USB3 device from the host. Back to the VM community

I can confirm that the USB 3.0 ports do not work in VMWare as I see the same issue.

Maybe, it does matter which one is powered. If I am not wrong, only one of the USBs 2.0 is powered. What kind of devices are you trying to connect to VMware via the USB?

SparcV wrote:I can confirm that the USB 3.0 ports do not work in VMWare as I see the same issue.

Yep, that is pretty much the conclusion we came to.

Marin85 wrote:Maybe, it does matter which one is powered. If I am not wrong, only one of the USBs 2.0 is powered. What kind of devices are you trying to connect to VMware via the USB?

As far as I am aware, there is only 1x USB 2, this is the rear one. This works fine with all the devices I try with VMWare.

I am trying to connect Portable hard-drives, USB Serial adaptors & similartype devices.

lostcontrol wrote:As far as I am aware, there is only 1x USB 2, this is the rear one. This works fine with all the devices I try with VMWare

Then I must have had the other W series in mind... Anyways, apparently USB 3.0 still has some issues, very much including Lenovo W510, so no surprise that it would act funny (or would not act at all for that matter) with respect to VMware. Actually, I could not find any information on whether VMware workstation generally supports USB 3.0 passthrough The problem may then not be related specifically to W510 units.

Marin85 wrote:Then I must have had the other W series in mind... Anyways, apparently USB 3.0 still has some issues, very much including Lenovo W510,

This is interesting, what sort of issues??

so no surprise that it would act funny (or would not act at all for that matter) with respect to VMware. Actually, I could not find any information on whether VMware workstation generally supports USB 3.0 passthrough The problem may then not be related specifically to W510 units.

There is all sorts of general USB issues on the VMWare communities, so I would expect that USB3 is another headache for them all.

lostcontrol wrote:This is interesting, what sort of issues??

After wake-up or rebooting with the device attached, then not present, also performance issues it seems too. There are some threads here and mainly on Lenovo forum mentioning this. Dunno if any fix (BIOS or driver related) has been released since. I will try to dig them out later, right now I don´t much time for searching. I guess (forum search on both forums for USB 3.0 would pop up the relevant threads).

EDIT: OK, here is something recent:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... .0#p569327

I will try to update the list by the end of the weekend.

Interesting.

I do notice issues in certain circumstances also, I have a docking station with keyboard/mouse etc, that works fine. If I take the machine away from the dock, then bring it back, the USB devices fail to recognise again.

I have tried a few different remedies, 1 being to close lid/sleep mode etc, then into dock. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. This is quite a frustrating issue also, as my previous machine (HP) transferred to/from dock with no issues....