Virtual box or windows problem

[Tim Hall]

I have a fairly old slide scanner, Optic Film 7200, which is part of my project to digitise a huge quantity of 35mm slides.

My desktop runs Ubuntu but the scanner isn't supported on Ubuntu. Consequently I've installed Oracle VM virtual box and on that Windows 7.  I installed the scanner driver and Silver Fast U Scan which came bundled with the scanner. This worked fine until recently.
Now when I launch Silver Fast it craps out. "SF Launcher has stopped working. A problem caused the program to stop working properly. Windows will close the program and notify you if a solution is available."

Click OK, it closes, no notification of any solution.

I've reinstalled the scanner driver and Silver Fast to no avail.

Any bright ideas?

[fuaran]

Try Vuescan instead. IME it works much better than Silver Fast. I'm using it with a Plustek slide scanner.
There's also a Linux version, not tried that.

[Ham]

Also, VirtualBox and USB are a poisonous mix, often defying rhyme, reason and biscuits.

[Tim Hall]

Also, VirtualBox and USB are a poisonous mix, often defying rhyme, reason and biscuits.

Ah. There's interesting.  I see an update to Virtual Box is available so I'll look at that.  (Possibly related - I found that the CD drive isn't recognised by the VirtualBox either)

[pcolbeck]

Presumably you have checked that VirtualBox has passed the USB through to the Windows VM ? Same for the CD player by the way.

Devices -> USB settings
Devices -> Optical Disks

[Tim Hall]

A quick bit of fiddling last night got the following:

USB is working fine - ticked in the Devices box and contents of a USB stick are visible on File Explorer

CD had a tick missing somewhere in the settings. Can't remember where but not in Devices. Ticked and now visible, so doing stuff like repair windows using an install disk is now a possibilty.

Clicking Eject on File Explorer doesn't always work, but I'll manage.

More this evening.

[Ham]

USB is working fine - ticked in the Devices box and contents of a USB stick are visible on File Explorer

Just because you can communicate with a USB stick doesn't mean it is working fine. For example a webcam may not work. Logic, USB and Virtualbox should not be stored in the same container. Don't forget, what VB is providing is an emulation of the connection, not the connection itself.

[Afasoas]

VirtualBox is awful (IME). There are much better virtualisations options under Linux. I would look at libvirt + QEMU + KVM and manage with virt manager and use virt-viewer/SPICE for console access. I've found the USB support on virt-viewer to be second-to-none - I've attached all sorts of things from to my laptop and connected them through to the VM without issue.

The only downsides are more moving parts and installation of VirtIO drivers under Windows during install (you have to obtain an ISO and attach it to the VM as a DVD-ROM drive). The latter is optional but does give the best experience under Windows.

[Tim Hall]

After many Bad Swears I made a new virtual machine. This involved further Bad Swears due to either a shonky DVD drive or a scratched W7 DVD. Attempts to install W7 from a bootable USB were scuppered by VirtualBox not allowing (as far as I could see) booting from a USB. (I also tried install Vuescan on the original W7 virtual box butthat crapped out with the same unhelpful message).

Anyway, I now have a working ancient slide scanner on a virtual W7 box.  I'll save the virtual machine for easy reinstallation for when it all goes Pete Tong in the future.

[SoreTween]

Try Vuescan instead. IME it works much better than Silver Fast. I'm using it with a Plustek slide scanner.
There's also a Linux version, not tried that.

Thanks for this recommendation.  The default on Mint is Simple Scan which is far too simple, you can't even white balance and on our Epson everything has a bad blue rinse.  XSane is just ugly and not intuitive at all so I've just got a license of VueScan.  I do like software designed to do one job and do it well.

[Tim Hall]

VirtualBox is awful (IME). There are much better virtualisations options under Linux. I would look at libvirt + QEMU + KVM and manage with virt manager and use virt-viewer/SPICE for console access. I've found the USB support on virt-viewer to be second-to-none - I've attached all sorts of things from to my laptop and connected them through to the VM without issue.

The only downsides are more moving parts and installation of VirtIO drivers under Windows during install (you have to obtain an ISO and attach it to the VM as a DVD-ROM drive). The latter is optional but does give the best experience under Windows.

Revisiting this one. I've (as mentioned elsewhere) blagged a machine from work to put Ubuntu onto. That all went quite well. However, it wouldn't play nicely with Virtual Box so I'm going down the libvirt/QEMU/KVM/virt-manager route. I've found a few how to guides on the web and can get ther machine to start installing. However it fails to find signed device drivers when I point it at the VirtIo ISO that I've mounted. The guide I'm using says go for the viostar directory then choose the relevant OS (w7) and architecture (x86). Then it gives me the no signed drivers error.

I'm using this video guide on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzY1KcMi67M. I get a couple of different options - SATA rather than IDE drives for example, presumably due to the age of that guide.  Any clues welcome.

EDIT. Thinking for more than a few seconds, that is most likely where my problem lies. Off to delve into the virtio web pages.
Fixed it. Phear mi l33t haxxor skillz