Comment 24 for bug 54419

Disclaimer: This could be COMPLETELY UNRELATED, but...

I solved this same persistant problem on my system (Feisty 2.6.20-16) by using the instructions at this link:

http://www.vmware.com/community/message.jspa?messageID=575305#575305

Specifically:

<quote>
Found this information from another post in the Ubuntu Linux forums, maybe it is relevant in other linux ditros...

USB Devices Are Not Available on Some Linux hosts, the VM > Removable Devices > USB Devices Menu Is Empty

In short, the problem was Ubuntu not mounting USBFS to /proc/bus/usb.

Solution:
sudo mount -t usbfs none /proc/bus/usb

and add the following line in the /etc/fstab file:
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs auto 0 0
</quote>