I’ve tried this on 3 different hosts and the device and driver works fine on 1 and fails to start on 2.

Host: Windows 10 19041 on all 3

Client: Windows 7 Ultimate 32bit

VMWare Player 15.5.6 in all cases

Running the same copy the client across all 3

Latest VMWare tools

The one host that works is a Lenovo x220 with a core i5 2520 processor.  The other two are newer PCs a Lenovo T460 i5-core6300 and a NUC desktop i5 7250.

Might also be worth noting that the x220 host is Windows 10 upgraded from Win7 and the other two were fresh installs of Win10

I mention the processor type because when starting up the VM for the first time on a new host, that is the only thing that the client detects as new, otherwise there is nothing that happens when starting the VM for the first time.

Using USB 2.0 in the VM, but have tried 1.1 and 3.1 with the same behavior.

I have tried older versions of Player with no difference.  Tried disabling Hypervisor & Hyper-V, no difference.  Tried running the device in a WinXP VM also, with the same outcome.

For what it’s worth, this USB device is an automotive tool to communicate with a particular make of car.  I have other similar ones for different manufacturers running in the same base VM that work just fine on all of these same hosts.

I have a feeling there is some driver security / signing thing that the newer PCs are expecting that the old one is not checking for but I don’t have clear evidence of that.  The drivers are signed, SHA1 as they are pretty old.  The signature expired in 2010 and the client is running with a fade date of 2013 (again same on all 3 hosts).

Really scratching my head on this one.  Any ideas appreciated.