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I have a Windows 7 machine that I use VMware Workstation on. I will often do the following:

  • attach a USB thumb drive to my VM
  • mount the USB
  • write some stuff to it
  • unmount
  • detach USB from VM.

Sometimes, this works fine and I can then Safely Remove from the Windows Host with no issues. Sometimes, this happens instead:

enter image description here

After this point, no external USB devices will work in any of my USB ports until I do a full reboot (they don't seem to be detected at all).

Windows seems to not be sure if this device exists any more:

  • Right-clicking and doing 'eject' on this phantom G: drive gets me an error 'still in use!'
  • The 'Safely Remove' list still displays the G: drive, but it's greyed out and not selectable.
  • Process Explorer doesn't show anything having a handle still open on it.
  • Sysinternals' Sync tool says 'There is no media in drive G'.

Any ideas how I can track down what's happening here, and if possible prevent it?

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  • Is Windows 7 fully updated? What's the VMWare Workstation version?
    – and31415
    Sep 1, 2014 at 14:37
  • Updates for Windows 7 are handled by my system admin so I'm not sure sorry. Workstation is version 9.0.1 build-894247
    – jam
    Sep 1, 2014 at 14:42
  • What is the OS that is running inside the VM workstation? Is it also Windows 7 like the OS on the external box? Sep 1, 2014 at 15:02
  • No, openSUSE (various versions, including 13.1).
    – jam
    Sep 1, 2014 at 15:12
  • @jam Do USB devices work fine if you don't use WMWare at all? If that's the case, the issue could be related to the WMWare USB driver. For what is worth, latest version is 9.0.4 build-1945795, released on July 3, 2014. According to the release notes, some USB problems were fixed.
    – and31415
    Sep 1, 2014 at 15:18

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