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Working with printers, disks, and other devices in VMware Fusion

Purpose

This article discusses best practices for setting up printers, using CD/DVD drives to install software, and adding devices (such as additional hard disks and USB drives) in VMware Fusion.

Resolution

Printers

There are four ways to connect a printer to a virtual machine:  

  • Printer pass-through using the Printers pane of the virtual machine's settings.
     
  • The USB pane of the virtual machine's settings. Install the printer as you would on a physical machine. If you connect a USB printer, you must connect a CD/DVD drive to install the software and drivers for your specific printer or download the required software from the Internet. For more information, see the CD/DVD section of this article.
     
  • Share the printer from your Mac using Apple's Bonjour protocol.
     
  • For networked printers, set your network to bridged and install the printer as you would on a physical computer. As with connecting a printer through USB, you must connect the CD/DVD drive to install the software and drivers or download them from the Internet. For more information, see the CD/DVD section.
For more information about these options, see Printing from within a virtual machine in VMware Fusion (1013997).

CD/DVD

To use CDs and DVDs to install software in a virtual machine:
  1. Connect the CD/DVD drive of the Mac to the virtual machine. This can be done with the virtual machine powered on or off.
  2. With the virtual machine either selected in the virtual machine library or in use, click Virtual Machine > Settings from Fusion's menu bar.
  3. Click CDs & DVDs.
  4. Ensure that the Connected check box is selected.
  5. Ensure the Automatically Detect check box is selected, or specify the physical CD/DVD drive you are using.
  6. Power on the virtual machine and insert the CD or DVD.  It is now be accessible from the virtual machine.
Note: The CD/DVD drive can be connected to only one operating system at a time, and only one virtual machine can use the drive at a time. If it is in use by the virtual machine then disks will not be detected by the Mac until you disconnect the CD/DVD drive in the settings or power off the virtual machine.

USB devices

To connect USB devices to a virtual machine:
 
Note: You can only connect USB devices to a virtual machine if it is powered on.
  1. With the virtual machine either selected in the virtual machine library or in use, click Virtual Machine > Settings from Fusion's menu bar.
  2. In the USB Devices pane, ensure that Enable USB 2.0 support is selected.
  3. Check the Connect USB devices section for the USB device.

    Note: Devices are often listed by the manufacturer name, which may be unfamiliar to you. 

    If the device is listed, you can use it as you would on a physical machine. Depending on the device, you may have to install the software or drivers that came with it in order to use it properly. This is the case for devices such as printers. However, most USB hard drives without installing any software or drivers.
USB devices can only connect to one place at a time (that is, either in a virtual machine or on the Mac). As with the CD/DVD drive, you can disconnect the device so it can be used on the Mac.
 
To disconnect a device, pick one of these options:
  • Deselect Enable USB 2.0 support
  • Eject the device in My Computer
  • Click once on the connected hardware system tray icon.  
  • Power off the virtual machine.

    Note: When you power off the virtual machine, the USB is automatically disconnected. However, the device reconnects if you power back on the virtual machine.

Additional Information

Firewire devices are not supported in VMware Fusion. To access Firewire hard drives, you can use Fusion's Shared Folders feature. For more information,  see Sharing a folder from the host machine to a virtual machine (1004055).

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Actions
  • KB Article: 1014523
  • Updated: Oct 27, 2009
  • Products:
    VMware Fusion
  • Product Versions:
    VMware Fusion 1.x
    VMware Fusion 2.x
    VMware Fusion 3.x