Now Fixed
I just installed Workstation 12 in the hope that the USB devices would work (they were very sporadic on Workstation 11).
The USB device is a USB 3 SSD (Identified as Kingston SSD by vmware workstation).
In the preferences for USB I do not see a USB 3.0 support, it is set to 2.
Is there a way of setting up for the USB 3 support? vmware tools are installed.
I get an indication that the device is connected, Windows attempts to install something, then a message comes up the device is not connected to its ideal controller. The USB device does not appear in the guest.
Similar behaviour appears to occur with a linux guest- the USB device does not appear.
A USB 2 stick appears to work properly, both Windows and Linux.
Answer: I had to update the Windows 7 guest VM to vmware Workstation 12 compatibilty;
then change the USB type to 3.0;
then download the drivers identified in the USB devices tab
Message was edited by: shellycat