PDO filtering - USB Bluetooth dongle redirection to Guest on inside VMWare Workstation

NTDEV
1

Hello there,
I have a Windows 11 host that runs VMWare workstation 16.x with Windows 10 client OS. I have USB Bluetooth dongle connected to host. VMWare's USB device redirection capability seem to have limitations that it excludes connecting Bluetooth dongle to the client (like the way it allows a USB thumb drive to be connected to the guest). However, it does allow a paired connected device in the host to be connected inside the VM which is something not useful to me (as I need to work the Bluetooth device discovery).

Any suggestion on what approach I can take to fool the VMWare bus filter to think that this is NOT a Bluetooth device so it would let it connect to the guest OS's? I am thinking of having my own PDO filter to filter this device out and spin out a new PDO with descriptors that would make it look like a vendor device to fool VMWare into letting it connect to the guest VM and then have this scheme reversed inside the guest OS so it would properly appear as a Bluetooth dongle. This scheme seems overly complicated and not sure whether it would work and worth the effort. Any thoughts?
Thank you!

2

From my reading, what you're asking is simply not supported. You can pass through Bluetooth devices, but not Bluetooth controllers. You'll need to run this on physical hardware. Mini PCs today are less than $200.

Your "fooling" scheme is hopeless. The device redirection happens in the hypervisor layer, a realm where you really don't want to delve. There be dragons.

3

We had no issues with VirtualBox passing in a Bluetooth USB dongle. Maybe these steps help:

  • If you have a built-in Bluetooth adapter (from your laptop or motherboard), turn it off in Windows Settings and then disable it in the Windows Device Manager.
  • Plug in your USB Bluetooth dongle.
  • Pass it into your VM.
  • Enable your the built-in Bluetooth adapter
  • Enable Bluetooth again.

Hope this helps.

4

Passing the entire Bluetooth host radio dongle to the client VM is perfectly supported in Workstation for a long time, make sure you unticked this box:

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Then the dongle becomes available for pass-through.

5

This is simply NOT true - the Bluetooth Controller is NOT available natively to the guest VM, the only thing you can do is to share/pass Bluetooth devices to the guest VM from the host.

And in fact I would also point to this official article which clearly states that "Bluetooth device support is removed in VMware Workstation 17.6 and later"

6

Guess I just imagined and dreamed up multiple years on developing Bluetooth profile drives inside VMware Workstation that exact way just fine. Oh well.