I know there is a fair bit of material on this issue but I have tried it all and cannot get it to work.
Here's where I'm at:
Laptop: Lenovo G50-70
Host - Mint 17.2 uptodate.
Guest - Windows 7 32bit.
Vbox 5.1.26 VBox Ext Pack 5.1.26 (as per preferences in VBox)
Vbox Guest Additions also added and working for shared net drive
Installed the VBox extension pack and enabled USB2.0 on guest.
Booted Win7 guest which installed the correct drivers for USB. Device Mngr says all ok
In host: sudo usermod -aG vboxusers joe (and also variant -a -G) seemed to go fine
Rebooted host after any group changes to take effect.
Checked ID and 125(vboxusers) there
Also checked users and groups and added me to 1001(virtualbox)
In users and groups added me to group vboxsf with ID 111
Also changed my long username to match joe (in case this was a problem - joe is the only user other than root)
I have tried different usb drives 3.0 and 2.0 and with no joy. The windows computer simply will not see any connected usb devices. Using a 2.0 port on host computer. VBox is simply not seeing any connected USB devices whether mounted or unmounted.
Some have suggested running VBox as root but I have tried that but it runs a different VBox with no machine in it (makes sense as root isn't joe I guess!)
Anyone any idea what the problem is?