Script to attach a USB device to a virtual machine [VPC]

Ben posted this a long time ago, but it’s still important for WVPC

# Connect to Virtual PC
$vpc = new-object -com VirtualPC.Application
# Get VM name
$vmName = Read-host "Specify the name of the virtual machine that you want to use"

# List available USB devices
write-host "The following USB devices are available:"
$vpc.USBDeviceCollection | select -ExpandProperty DeviceString
# Get the USB device name
$usb = Read-host "Enter the name of the USB device that you want to connect to the virtual machine"
# Get the VM object
$vm = $vpc.findVirtualMachine($vmName)
# Get the USB object
$usbDevice = $vpc.USBDeviceCollection | ? {$_.DeviceString -eq $usb} | select -first 1

# Attach the device - this will fail if the VM is not running
$vm.AttachUSBDevice($usbDevice)

Get all the details at Ben’s blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2011/01/18/script-to-attach-a-usb-device-to-a-virtual-machine-vpc.aspx

You can also download the script from Ben’s page

 

 

VMWare vSphere Hypervisor 5

I was excited to try out the new free version of ESXi 5 today on a test system with a Core 2 Quad Q6600. 

I received an ominous message that “VMWare ESXi 5.0 installs on most systems but only systems on VMWare’s compatibility Guide are supported.”  I didn’t think much of it until I got to the next stage of the install and got this message:

“Error(s) <CPU_CORES ERROR: This host has [1] cpu core(s) which is less than recommended [2] cpu cores>”

“(F9) Back                (F11) Reboot”

Game over?  Not quite.  I found a post http://communities.vmware.com/message/1082035#1082035 with an almost identical hardware config referring to the same issue for ESX 3. 

Disable MAX CPUid in the BIOS, installation completed.