To make USB devices accessible to a guest OS under VirtualBox, one must

  i) install the appropriate extension pack 



 ii) navigate to 'Settings ----> USB' in the VirtualBox menu and



iii) tick 'Enable USB 2.0 (EHCI) Controller



 iv) add a `USB device filter` 

Step iv) requires selecting a USB device filter by clicking on a list of available USB devices which appears at the mouse-pointer position

• when clicking on the 'Add new USB filter` icon on the right margin (
  a USB icon with a green plus sign )



• when pressing ALT+INS

  
  
  

  

In either case one will see a list of USB device candidates currently attached to the host system.

These can then be selected and will appear permanently under the 'USB Device Filters' list of the USB menu.

This does not work under 14.04.

When attempting to add an attached device ( clicking on appropriate icon or pressing ALT+INS )

• VirtualBox can not see any of the connected USB devices, resulting in
  a <no devices available> message.




• Trying to enter the device details manually into a blankly created
  USB device filter does not work either.




• Booting the guest OS ( Win 7 ), you are not able to see any
  'removable drives'.

The obvious items were all checked:

• VirtualBox installed from repository ( apt-get install )
  App reports version 4.3.10




• Appropriate VirtualBox extension pack ( 4.3.1r93733 ) successfully downloaded+installed from the Oracle site

As mentioned previously on the the same box with 12.04 installed everything works as it should and Win7 can see the removable drive as expected.

As a last resort various permutations of VM settings, USB sticks, e.t.c. were tried without achieving the desired result.

• Has anyone encountered the same issue?


• Has anyone encountered similar difficulties?


• Has anyone been able to work around the problem? ( remember manual
  entry of device details into an empty filter entry has not worked )

Does anyone know if this is an issue

• with VirtualBox?


• with the current version of the VirtualBox extension pack?


• or perhaps even with Trusty Tahr itself?

I have full USB functionality on my 14.04 host.