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Alfa And Wmware


SinisterRaccoon

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been having an issue with the alfia wifi adaptors and vmware. bt5r3 is running on vmware and it recognizes the adaptor as it should, however, when i choose to connect to the alfa and disconnect from host, it gives me the error box telling me that it is still in use by the host. occasionally it will also give me a driver error instead. the laptop is using its built in wifi and the alfa is not showing as connected to any networks. any thoughts? after alot of searching i have come up with squat. also bt5 does not show it as connected as of yet.

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update...tried using virtualbox, hoping vmware was just being fussy...no luck. i can see the alfa in the usb devices on the virtualbox, i can add it as a filter, but when i go to connect to it..same deal. i get the error that the connection was unsuccessful because alfa is currently in use. i did disable the connection in windows, no change. running this all on asus g75, i7, 16gb ram, nvidia 670,2x500 ssd in raid 0, windows 7 ultimate....something im missing? didnt have any issues on the old laptop running the same setup on bt5r2...

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well from what ive found, my alfa issue deals with the issue that the os in vmware has no support for usb 3.0. if using a native linux os, there is a fix, however, not in the virtual world. sooo...since all my ports on this great new laptop are 3.0, im sol at the moment. guess back to the old standby for playing around. makes sense now i guess, now that i think of it...my mouse even gives me the same error when trying to connect to the vmware....any thoughts?

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There are always people in this forum, but they expect you to do a little bit of research before posting stuff.

In response to your question, there is an option in Vmware, that you can select to disconnect an USB device from the host and have it connected to the virtual machine isntead!

Edited by Infiltrator
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ALFA AWUS036H, works perfect on the older laptop with usb 2.0, but the g75 only has 3.0 ports. I get the same error if i try to connect the alfa or any other device recognized my vmware. It just tells me that the device is currently in use. I did check the bios options to try to let the ports be only 2.0, but there is no option there.

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I have the same problem, my new laptop only have usb 3.0 ports and no usb devices work in vmware or virtual boxs. I think vmware does not support usb 3.0 yet (could be that it works in Fusion but for me at least it does not work in Player 5).

Edited by Sprokket
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does anyone have vmware recognizing usb devices through usb 3.0 ports here? i know vmware says they support 3.0, and it should work with linux as guest, but it seems like there are ppl out here with the same issues. i have checked my .vmx file in the bt5 vm, and the line that says

usb_xhci.present = "TRUE" is what it should be in order for 3.0 support to work with a linux guest...

what confuses me is that wmware "sees" the Alfa as a usb device in the dropdown menu, but when i choose to connect to it and disconnect from the host, i keep getting the error that "it is currently in use". I have disabled all network connections one by one, no change. there does not seem to be any processess running on the host machine that would be holding on to the Alfa.

If anyone has something else to possibly try, please chime in.

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I can confirm this issue too. I can't figure out how to make it work... I have used the same exact set-up on my iMac (windows 7 + vmware image) and it worked flawlessly.

I originally believed it to be a driver issue, so I wiped my laptop and installed a clean copy of 7. Same issue. Tried it with both the VMWare image and LIve CD.

There's an issue with this particular set-up and the laptop which I cannot figure out. Everytime you try to connect to the VM and disconnect from host you get an error that the Realtek is in use.

Wish I knew how to fix this... It's the Alfa awu036h.

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I had both the ALFA AWUS036H and AWUS036NH working in BT5R3 with VMWare 8 on my USB3 ports. Worked a treat with Easy-Cred, Yamas and various other tools. Upgraded to VMWare 9, started getting the driver error. I'll try downgrading at some point, but you could try the same?

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My problem was because vmware was not working with the Intel USB 3.0 eXtensible host controller. After uninstalling the driver (use "Uninstall program" from the control panel) the USB ports works in virtual machines. When I need USB 3.0 in host I have to install the driver again :blink:. Not the best solution but at least now I can use USB devices in virtual machines.

Edited by Sprokket
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  • 3 weeks later...

Hi there, found this forum because i'm having the exact same problem. Just purchased a new Asus G75 and what a disapointment knowing that I cant use the alfa in any virtualized envyronement via Vmware. It just says device is still in use. I 'v tryed about anything , drivers , boot from cd etc nothing seems to work. If anyone got news plese share them. thanks

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  • 1 month later...

I have an Asus G75 and have found a temporarily solution.

I performed a clean install of Windows 7 and installed all updates via Windows Update. Then, I installed all drivers from the Asus Rog website EXCEPT the USB driver. Upon rebooting, Windows had installed their own drivers (perhaps one which came in tone of the Windows Update package).

I'm getting USB 2 speeds but inside VMWare I can now successfully connect my Alfa device and other USB devices.

Hope this helps.

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  • 3 months later...

Problem solved, at least on my g75...So either I have just been glancing over it, or the option wasnt there in the beginning. BUT. I updated my bios to the latest available, and decided to try to get the alfa working in vmware as well as virtualbox once again. What I did was look in the bios settings under usb, there is a setting for xhci, auto, enable, or disable....well choose disable. after that, the alfa is now able to connect to vmware as well as virtualbox as it should. hope this helps!

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NOTE: Before you start any of the following instructions, I assume you have already installed the Alfa AWUS036NHA drivers following the instructions at http://alfanetworkinc.blogspot.tw/2012/11/install-awus036nha-into-your-linux-box.html



SOLUTION:


My Alfa AWUS036NHA works perfect in BT5R3 hard drive install, however, I was was having difficulties getting it to work on BT5R3 in Virtualbox and VMware. Both Virtualbox and VMware are able to detect and connect to the usb Alfa AWUS036NHA (UB91C), and running lsusb shows "Atheros Communications AR9271", however, ifconfig, iwconfig, and airmon-ng do not see the wifi device! After spending a few days, off and on, trying to figure out the problem and reading so many times people saying this is a bug in Virtualbox/VMware "USB Passthrough" and statements that the AWUS036NHA will not work, I found this was not true!


The problem was that even though Virtualbox and VMware detected and connected the AWUS036NHA (UB91C), and the host was supposedly disconnected from the device even using ifconfig wlan0 down, in all actuality the host was still loading the driver and that was the reason it was not showing up in wireless devices in the virtual machine.


The easy solution? disable the host from loading the Atheros driver:


On the host, edit the blacklist...

nano /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf


simply add the following anywhere in the blacklist.conf file:


blacklist ath9k_htc

blacklist ath9k_hw

blacklist ath


Save the changes (CTRL + O, then CTRL +X), reboot the host, login and start the BackTrack5 Virtual Machine, open a terminal, type iwconfig or airmon-ng and you should see your Alfa is finally working:

wlan0 Atheros AR9271 ath9k [phy0]

__________

Now on to my next problem.. iwconfig is showing that my AWUS036NHA is only running at Tx-Power=20 dBm (100mw)!? How to force BackTrack to change regulatory domain to BO (Bolivia) to enable unrestricted Tx-Power=30 dBm (1000mw)

Edited by Xerom
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