Windows – How many usb devices can I connect to a server

I've had success with Sysinternals Process Explorer. With this, you can search to find what process(es) have a file open, and you can use it to close the handle(s) if you want. Of course, it is safer to close the whole process. Exercise caution and judgement.

To find a specific file, use the menu option Find->Find Handle or DLL... Type in part of the path to the file. The list of processes will appear below.

If you prefer command line, Sysinternals suite includes command line tool Handle, that lists open handles.

Examples

• c:\Program Files\SysinternalsSuite>handle.exe |findstr /i "e:\" (finds all files opened from drive e:\"
• c:\Program Files\SysinternalsSuite>handle.exe |findstr /i "file-or-path-in-question"

I had issues setting this up with Ubuntu Server 8.04 as well. The answer lay in this Ubuntu Launchpad entry. It turns out VMWare are using a very old method of scanning for USB devices. In Ubuntu this can be reenabled by editing /etc/init.d/mountdevsubfs.sh and uncommenting the following:

#
# Magic to make /proc/bus/usb work
#
mkdir -p /dev/bus/usb/.usbfs
domount usbfs "" /dev/bus/usb/.usbfs -obusmode=0700,devmode=0600,listmode=0644
ln -s .usbfs/devices /dev/bus/usb/devices
mount --rbind /dev/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb

After rebooting the VMWare web console successfully detected the USB devices. What you should see when logged into the VMWare Server web console is a small USB icon in the top menu on the far right. It is then a case of selecting your Windows VM, going up to the dropdown and selecting the USB device you want to attach to that VM.

• Make sure you have added the USB controller virtual hardware device to the Windows VM.
• I have not tested this with Intrepid, but it works fine with the latest release of Hardy (8.04LTS).