USB of prgmer unrecognized by computer

I am running windows inside VirtualBox on a mac computer.

When i open up the system, the Vbox system will not recognize the programmer in the USB port. It is listed on the drop down menu of what's plugged in. however it is greyed out and when you hover over it, it says "U2 usb programmer. unavailable."
So i know vbox sees the device but for some reason it has decided it is not available.
I have listed it in the preferences as a USB that i want enabled, so thats not it.

Does anyone have any advice.

I know this is a question suited for the vbox forum but i thought some of you might have encountered it as well since we all use the programmer.

thanks

I use VMWare's Fusion on my Macbook Pro with MELab's USB programmer. My guess is that you don't have the correct driver installed in the virtual machine. Another thought, with Fusion you can just click on USB devices to connect & disconnect them,so if you want to share with OS-X you can, I don't know if VBox has something similar, but maybe it's something that simple?

Jerry.