Hello.
Before I go on. I am running ESX hosts at version 4.1 Update 1 build 433742. It is an 8 host VMware View 5.0 cluster. Running on UCS B230 Blade servers both 6 core and 10 core. The VMs with the issue are mainly XP SP3 and some Windows 7 32 bit. 64 bit windows 7 is fine.
Has anyone run across an issue where
1. A virtual desktop bluescreens when a USB device is plugged in?
2. The USB device simply does not show up when it is plugged in.
I was having both. It was a bit frustrating as the problem seemed to be inconsistent. However after digging in a little bit I have found some interesting information. When the VMware View agent is installed it copys the Virtual USB driver to the system32\drivers folder. The usb driver file is WSUSBVMAN.sys. This driver appears to be fine and is layed down by the agent.
The problem child appears to be a file that is perhaps a collaboration between Microsoft and Vmware. The file is wsusbvhub.sys (The virtual usb hub). If you remove this file and uninstall and reinstall the agent it does not get replaced. I am not sure where this file comes from and am still researching. It does not come from VMware Tools either.
Here is the kicker. I have found 3 different versions of this file (wsusbvhub.sys) on various virtual desktops.
The one that caused the Blue Screen had a build date of 2/10/2010 (Build 4.0.0 build-199261). This file consistently blue screened the vms. The moment you added the usb device or booted with one attached it would bluescreen with a stop D1 (DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL). Relatively generic stop code.
The other two versions were actually created on the same day one half hour apart from each other. The date 2/18/2011, one at 5:02pm. the other at 5:34pm. Same build numbers (4.6.0 build-329952). Very strange. What was even stranger is that the file created at 5:34 does not work in our environment, it does not bluescreen the vm but it does not seem to fix my USB devices as they do not show up. If I use the file that was created at 5:02 pm it works fine everytime. You replace the bad file with this one and reboot. It has consitently fixed my issue.
Again I am not sure where this file originates from or why I had the old 2010 file when my images had the good file. If anyone has seen this issue and have come to the same conclusion but had found a reason why this is the case please reply.
Thanks in advance! I will update as I gather more information.
Rod