Recently I had an issue where VMware fusion on my Mac would not allow a USB device to pass-through. Meaning, if you connected a USB thumb drive or selected it from the menu, it would not attach to the virtual OS.
The fix was reported on a vmware support site: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&docTypeID=DT_KB_1_1&externalId=2004687
In short, you need to run the following commands from terminal: if the result of the first command is not root / wheel
ls -ld /
sudo chown root:wheel /Then you actually need to reboot. That fixed it for me, let others know if it fixed it for you below.