USB scanner broken in VirtualBox

[Graham Menhennitt]

Hello FreeBSDers,

I have an Epson V700 Photo scanner connected via USB. I use the original 
Epson software running in a VirtualBox instance of Windows XP. It's all 
worked fine for years until a couple of weeks ago.

The Epson software correctly detects the scanner and can initiate a scan 
successfully. The carriage moves and the scanner light comes on. The 
carriage moves to the end of the scan and returns to it's home position. 
But,according to the software, the scan never completes. The software 
continues saying "scan in progress" and the green LED on the scanner 
shows that it's scanning. Eventually, the software times out and reports 
"trouble communicating with the scanner".

I can successfully scan on FreeBSD using the "sane" port. But the Epson 
software is easier to use.

I upgraded my FreeBSD via source and rebuilt my ports including 
VirtualBox. I'm running FreeBSD 12-Stable with source as of last week, 
and VirtualBox 5.2.30. VBox 5.2.28 has the same problem.

Does anybody have any clues, please? Is there something I can do to 
diagnose it?

Thanks for any help,

     Graham