Help with eHCI and xHCI hand off, mode for passthrough

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epicurean

Active Member
Sep 29, 2014
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Ever since I "upgraded" my X10SLM esxi from 5.5 to 6.0u1, my usb controllers on the motherboard have been going crazy.

In 5.5, with my motherboard bios setting eHCI hands off- enabled, xHCI hands off- disabled, xHCI mode - Smart Auto, I could pass through one of the usb2 controllers to a windows 7 VM.

After upgrade, same bios setting, passthrough had no effect. USB devices just were not detected. Silly me, passthrough both usb2 controllers , which made things work again but now my esxi USB drive cannot be updated. So I did the whole ESXI setup again, I went into the motherboard bios, changed the xHCI mode to "enabled", all my usb controllers disappeared.

Now I disabled both eHCI and xHCI hands off , with xHCI mode back to Smart Auto - both my usb2 or ehci controllers returned.
Please help me figure out how to just passthrough just 1 of the USB controllers.

Much thanks
 

Patriot

Moderator
Apr 18, 2011
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This is an 1150 usb3 issue... pinging someone who fixed this on his asrock 1150 ...
Edit: Smart auto should work. Issues were under xhci on.
 
Last edited:

epicurean

Active Member
Sep 29, 2014
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Thank you! should I should set xHCI mode to Smart Auto. What about eHCI and xHCI hand off? should they be enabled or disabled?
 

Patriot

Moderator
Apr 18, 2011
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Thank you! should I should set xHCI mode to Smart Auto. What about eHCI and xHCI hand off? should they be enabled or disabled?
I haven't the foggiest, everything works on my X99...
@Shadow.X

You know... the freenode #servethehome irc channel is quite a good place for live diag...
There are currently 30 members in there.
 
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epicurean

Active Member
Sep 29, 2014
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when I query lsusb, I can see xHCI and both eHCI controllers. why is it that I cannot see the xHCI controller in vsphere for passthrough?
 

epicurean

Active Member
Sep 29, 2014
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To continue with my story,
I decided to change my esxi usb stick to a usb 3.0 one(did a fresh installation of esxi 6 u1 on it), and now all the USB 3.0 devices seem to populate only the USB 3.0 related bus/xhci controller with the lsusb command.
However, strangely enough, when I try to pass through any of the usb 2.o controller (eHCI), after a reboot, all the usb devices (usb 2.0 and usb 3.0) congregate into usb 2.0 bus.
Any one has an explanation?

I want to be careful because I do not want my esxi USB boot stick to be passthrough.

any suggestions welcomed.
 

Debink

New Member
Apr 25, 2016
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Did you ever get this resolved? Having similar issue with my X10SDV board. I have two USB controllers that I can pass-thru. If I only pass-through 1 usb controller the devices remain visible in ESXi (the hypervisor) but no devices are visible in the VM. It doesn't matter if I pass-through the first or second USB device (so there doesn't seem to be a relation between the physical USB ports and the controller being either EHCI #1 or EHCI #2). As soon as I pass-through both USB controllers all the devices attached to the port suddenly appear in my VM and are no longer visible in ESXi.

Tried various options in the bios like handoff auto/enabled but none seem to change this behaviour.
 

epicurean

Active Member
Sep 29, 2014
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I have since moved on to another motherboard and need not deal with this issue anymore. It does appear to be a 1150 chipset issue