PICkit 2 and VirtualBox

It seems to be a perennial woe to make PICkit work with VirtualBox.

In my particular set-up, I use VMs to run guest installations of Windows XP that are specific to particular toolchains. All this runs on a Windows 7 64-bit host.

So, as discussed elsewhere PICkit and VirtualBox don't play nicely. The solution is as follows:

1. Plug in your PICkit and open the VirtualBox Manager UI
2. Add a USB filter and select your PICkit
3. Edit the USB filter and leave just the Name, Vendor ID and Product ID removing all other items in the filter, particularly the Manufacturer and Serial Number
4. Boot or Re-boot your VM, plug and un-plug your PICkit and it'll appear in your VM which will install its own HID drivers.

So I think the problem is that Windows enumerates two devices - a USB Input Device and a HID-compliant device. The default VirtualBox filter appears to be capturing one of them but not the other.

Good luck!