Create a small Windows partition on a computer you use.Install Windows on an old unused computer.I don't use Windows but the only workaround I could come up with is have a small Windows installation just for updating firmware.

My question is similar to this one, but that user is asking if it's safe to update firmware, not if it's possible.Īfter trying a handful of iterations (Windows 10/11 on VirtualBox/Gnome Boxes/virt-manager) my best guess is that it simply isn't currently possible to update firmware through a Windows VM running on Linux. So I'm wondering if perhaps there's something unique to how Linux USB devices connect to VMs that makes firmware updates impossible. I've seen some people mention they were able to update firmware using Virtualbox on macOS, e.g.: Lastly, I tried Gnome Boxes and virt-manager in case this issue was unique to VirtualBox, but neither of those worked either. I've also read through this page and tried everything listed there: And I've tried setting the USB controller to different versions in the VM settings (USB 3.0, 2.0, 1.1). I also made sure I'm a member of the vboxusers group, and I see that VirtualBox's udev rules are intact at /etc/udev/rules.d/les. multiple Logitech mice) I installed the vendor software which recognized the devices and allowed me to make changes to them (but not update firmware). I set up USB passthrough, and the devices appear to work fine within Windows. Next I tried updating the firmware in Windows 10 and 11 VMs using Virtualbox 7. I have a few USB devices that have newer firmware available, but I don't have a Windows PC handy to update the firmware.įirst I checked fwupdmgr to see if I could update the devices directly in Linux, but it said there weren't any firmware updates available.

To convert .vmdk to iso