Win 10 USB drivers disappear from Device Manager when starting Home Assistant in Virtualbox. This has happened five times in one day now. If I reboot, the drivers reappear in Device manager, but during the startup of Home Assistant via Virtualbox, the serial drivers disappear and are not accessible. They can reappear by checking “Show hidden devices in the View tab in Device Manager.
The status of the problem USB devices in Device Manager are shown here:
Unknown USB Device (Device Descriptor Request Failed)
Unknown USB Device (Device Descriptor Request Failed)
Unknown USB Device (Port Reset Failed)
Unknown USB Device (Port Reset Failed)
Unknown USB Device (Set Address Failed)
A further example:
Silicon Labs CP210x USB to UART Bridge COM3
Device type: Ports (COM & LPT)
Manufacturer. Silicon Labs
Location: Port_#0003.Hub_#0004
Device status
Currently, this hardware device is not connected to the computer.
(Code 45)
To fix this problem, reconnect this hardware device to the computer.
I have searched this issue on the internet and found several posts that had experienced the same or similar issues. However none of them found a solution.
I am posting this on several forums and asking for help on solving the problem.
I’m confused, are you passing the USB devices to VBox? If that is the case the devices are handed of to the VM, they will disapear in the windows device manager.
OK. So now I had Device Manager open while Virtualbox was loading HA. I saw the two cp210x usb drivers disappear from Device Manager display. Then I opened ESPHOME and attempted to download code to a D! mini esp32, but could not because no usb driver was available. I had attempted to load more cp210x drifers before without success.
So I kept thinking about your last comment and did some googling and I think you are right. I discovered that I do not have the extension pack installed. and I don’t know why. So I tried to do that and rant into issues. I am running VB V 6.1.40 and found
Failed to load the main module (‘C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\ExtensionPacks\Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack\win.amd64\VBoxPuelMain.DLL’): VERR_SYMBOL_NOT_FOUND - GetLastError=127.
Not sure why I cant add esxtensions to Ha, but still trying.
You don’t add the extension pack to Home Assistant, you install them on the machine that hosts VBox (VirtualBox). Also, I don’t think you can pass USB devices to a VM in VBox without already having the extension pack installed. (I could be wrong, but…)
I am using VB Version 6.1.40 r154048 (Qt5.6.2). I discovered that I had installed the extension in VB but it was an older version. So I updated it to current version.
Sadly, this did not fix the usb port problem.
I managed to remove the usb ports that were reserved by VB. Then they showed up in Device Manager but were greyed out and not available. I learned that I had to uninstall them, reboot ( a 15 minute wait on my PC) , confirm they were gone and then reinstall several usb port drivers, reboot, and find that they were back but not available. I went through this process three times while checking various method’s recommended on the web.
I am now out of ideas and hope that you may see the flaw in my method.
By the way, one of the reboots provided a port that I was able to use to download the ESPHome code. however, when I tried to load with the proxy code, the esp32 was no longer recognized.
Hoping you have a good reference to help me through this.
I’m just no sure what happened here, or why you removed ports (perhaps you mean devices?).
Windows USB subsystem can be complicated and if the framework is messed up, you may need to start over (Reinstall/Rest Windows). (hopefully you have a backup before all this)
I think most of the issues are under control now. I replaced some dodgy usb cables and got a new powered usb2 hub. That improved connections with some of my devices. I found out that some of the esp32 boards had to have the boot button pressed when connecting. Now they all connect fine. Tomorrow I can go back to setting up bluetooth sensors and Zigbee devices.