[LBo] USB not recognized on XP guest under VMware?

[Sam Morgan]

I have a real confusing one this time.
I am running Mint 3.0 (xfce) Community
I have installed VMWare Server
I have installed XP Home as a guest OS on the VM Server
I have enabled the VM's virtual USB device for XP home

but I can't access the usb flash drive
My computer has 4 usb pairs  of ports 2 on the mother board directly
and 2 others via jumper cables to the back and front of the computer

Mint sees and can access the usb flash drive on any and all of the usb ports 
with no problem

when I look in Mint's device manager I see:
VT*@xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller listed 4 times
also there is one listing for USB 2.0 EHCI Host Controller

here's my problem...
reading the help page I get this:
======================
Only one operating system — host or guest — can have control of a USB device at 
any one time.

Note: If your device is in use by the host and you try to connect it to the 
guest using the VM menu, a dialog box appears, informing you that there is a 
problem connecting to the device.

*note, I don't even get the warning*

To disconnect the device from the host, you must unload the device driver. You 
can unload the driver manually as root (su -) using the rmmod command. Or, if 
the driver was automatically loaded by hotplug, you can disable it in the 
hotplug configuration files in the /etc/hotplug directory. See your Linux 
distribution's documentation for details on editing these configuration files.
=======================

for one thing I don't see a /etc/hotplug directory
but I just plug in a flash drive and it pops up in Mint's file manager, so I 
guess it's hotplug enabled?
can you tell I'm still in the stone ages and this is my 1st encounter with usb 
devices?

So where/how do I determine which device driver is being loaded/used and
how/where do I disable it (or hopefully just one pair of the 4) so I can use a 
usb port for the XP home guest OS?


<are we having fun yet?>

-- 
God Bless,
Sam Morgan
http://linuxbasics.org
linux the lifetime learning experience