I'd be leery of using dongle drivers in a VM for forensics software. There are loads of known problems which could come back to bite you from a forensic
>>snip.
I do this all the time on my Mac with no problem (results were compared to native platform) and I know several agencies that do this as well and would be interested to know what issues you are referring to.
Win 7 64 bit is known to exhibit USB problems with some chipsets. This was widely reported a year or so ago, and I personally experienced it on one of my builds. I reverted back to Win 7 x86 and installed 64 bit on a different machine, where USB worked fine.
At the time, there was no chipset driver update available, but by now, I would expect pretty much every manufacturer would offer one, unless the mobo is a few years old, in which case you might be out of luck.
/scott
Win 7 64 bit is known to exhibit USB problems with some chipsets. This was widely reported a year or so ago, and I personally experienced it on one of my builds. I reverted back to Win 7 x86 and installed 64 bit on a different machine, where USB worked fine.
At the time, there was no chipset driver update available, but by now, I would expect pretty much every manufacturer would offer one, unless the mobo is a few years old, in which case you might be out of luck.
/scott
So it isn't a VM problem but a chipset problem. I don't see how this would affect a VM as the motherboard chipset is emulated and the VM software would have been developed to handle the emulated USB chipset correctly for the OS's supported by the VM software. This was indeed a problem with some early versions of various commercial VM environments but I have't encountered it for a very long time.
So it isn't a VM problem but a chipset problem. I don't see how this would affect a VM as the motherboard chipset is emulated and the VM software would have been developed to handle the emulated USB chipset correctly for the OS's supported by the VM software. This was indeed a problem with some early versions of various commercial VM environments but I have't encountered it for a very long time.
I didn't try a VM on the Win 7 64 bit build that was giving me USB problems, so, unfortunately, I don't have empirical evidence. However, particularly given that XP mode is implemented via Windows 7's Terminal Services / Remote Desktop Protocol (and thus relies heavily on Win 7), I think it's plausible that if the base OS is having trouble communicating with USB, then its VMs may, as well.
/scott
So it isn't a VM problem but a chipset problem. I don't see how this would affect a VM as the motherboard chipset is emulated and the VM software would have been developed to handle the emulated USB chipset correctly for the OS's supported by the VM software. This was indeed a problem with some early versions of various commercial VM environments but I have't encountered it for a very long time.
I didn't try a VM on the Win 7 64 bit build that was giving me USB problems, so, unfortunately, I don't have empirical evidence. However, particularly given that XP mode is implemented via Windows 7's Terminal Services / Remote Desktop Protocol (and thus relies heavily on Win 7), I think it's plausible that if the base OS is having trouble communicating with USB, then its VMs may, as well.
/scott
I understand what you are saying, but my original post was in response to what seemed to me to be a statement that VMs generally had some problem(s) that I (and others that I know that use them extensively) was not aware of. I have run Encase, FTK, PRTK, Prodiscover and other dongled software without a cough from the host (Mac) or guest OS (Win XPsp3).
So the real (potential) problem is the host OS and not the VM or guest OS.
RB