VirtualBox on ubuntu 8.10 host, can't get USB working in Windows XP guest, not permissions

[Chris G]

I have got VirtualBox running on a Ubuntu 8.10 host, it all runs pretty
smoothly (except for USB).

I have done all the things noted in http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/User_FAQ
and I don't seem to have any permission problems (they did appear
initially and were then cleared by doing this).  I have previously had
the same devices working in a Vmware Windows XP guest so I'm fairly
familiar with USB on virtual machines and these devices have worked before.


However I can't get *any* USB device to actually work in the XP guest.
They all appear as expected as USB Devices in the VirtualBox devices
menu and I can select and deselect them without problems.

What happens in the Windows XP guest system though is that, when a
device is plugged in and selected, it says "Found new hardware, USB
root hub" and then fails to install it.  This happens twice so the
system ends up with two devices called "Unknown device" with an
exclamation mark by them in Device Manager.

Removing and re-installing the unknown devices just ends up back in
the same place.

Help!!!  I'm really stuck here, I can't find anything at all that
looks like this searching with Google.  I have also asked on the
VirtualBox mailing list and haven't had much help there.

It *seems* as if I must be doing something basically wrong somewhere
since no one else has had this problem. I'm not a very 'Windows'
person so it could be that I'm doing something wrong in Windows and
that there's nothing wrong in the VirtualBox side of things.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

-- 
Chris Green