Script to attach a USB device to a virtual machine [VPC]
A couple of people have asked me how to automate attaching a USB device to a Windows Virtual PC virtual machine, so here is a PowerShell script to do just that:
# 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)
Note that I am using the “DeviceString” of the USB device – which is not guaranteed to be unique. So what I do is just grab the first one that matches.
Cheers,
Ben