VirtualBox Fails to Mount USB Devices When Dell Encryption Enterprise is Installed

Affected Products:

• Dell Encryption Enterprise
• Dell Data Protection | Enterprise Edition

Affected Versions:

• v11.0 and Earlier

Installing Dell Encryption Enterprise on the same base operating system as VirtualBox, causes VirtualBox to fail to mount the USB devices onto its Virtual Machines.

When Dell Encryption Enterprise is installed on an endpoint, a specific filter driver is added to the computer to manage the USB devices. This filter driver causes VirtualBox to fail to mount the USB devices with an error like the below one:

If not using Dell Encryption External Media to encrypt the USB devices, it is possible to manually remove the added filter driver from the registry following the steps below:

1. Login into the endpoint with an administrative account
2. Right-click the Windows start menu and then click Run.
   
3. In the Run UI, type regedit and then press OK. This opens the Registry Editor.
   
4. Expand the path HKLM\system\currentcontrolset\control\class and export a backup.
   
5. Search for all the entries of CmgPCS in HKLM\system\currentcontrolset\control\class: Edit -> Find.
   
   
   
6. Delete all the CmgPCS entries from UpperFilters and LowerFilters registry values.
   Warning: DO NOT DELETE THE WHOLE UpperFilters and LowerFilters KEYs as this results in an unusable computer at reboot and it is not possible to recover it.
   
7. Download Sysinternals Autoruns64 from Microsoft https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/ .
8. Open Autoruns64 > Drivers and look for CmgPCS and delete the entry.
   
9. Reboot the endpoint.