First let me say I know WiFi connectivity issues get posted to death especially when regarding USB dongles but I think my issue is a little different from most of the standard querys. Furthermore I am by no means new to linux and am almost embarrassed to say I went to university for 3 years taking network engineering so the fact I cant figure this out is literally driving me insane.
So here goes. Im running Kali 2.0 in Virtualbox 5.0.6 which I imported from a appliance file that I made after a fresh install of kali with all the updates. I attach my TP-Link TL-WN722N WiFi adapter to my Host and then inside VBox I connect it the normal way (by going to Devices > USB and selecting Atheros USB2.0 WLAN). It seems to mount with no problem and lsusb confirms this. However if i do a dmesg it tells me the firmware download failed(see below) which is really weird because the drivers are clearly already installed. Now before you suggest that I reload the firmware(which I have done anyways just incase) or anything like that here's the really weird part. If I go to my school, import the EXACT same appliance file into the same version VBox with the same extension pack just like I do at home and try the EXACT same process it will work no problem. The usb will load its driver and a second later the wlan0 interface pops into existence. Which would suggest that there is nothing wrong whatsoever with Kali and its files.
Im am tearing my hair out trying to figure this out as like I said both VMs are identical at home and at school so there should be no way It works at one place and not the other. My first thought was that it had to do with the host which I guess can really be the only thing it could be but I just cant figure out how the host causes the erroneous firmware download failed message.
Any help with this issue would be greatly appreciated.
results of dmesg
[ 191.970892] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 2 using ehci-pci
[ 192.285850] usb 1-1: config 1 interface 0 altsetting 0 bulk endpoint 0x83 has invalid maxpacket 64
[ 192.285855] usb 1-1: config 1 interface 0 altsetting 0 bulk endpoint 0x4 has invalid maxpacket 64
[ 192.300980] usb 1-1: New USB device found, idVendor=0cf3, idProduct=9271
[ 192.300985] usb 1-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=16, Product=32, SerialNumber=48
[ 192.300988] usb 1-1: Product: USB2.0 WLAN
[ 192.300990] usb 1-1: Manufacturer: ATHEROS
[ 192.300993] usb 1-1: SerialNumber: 12345
[ 193.528843] usb 1-1: ath9k_htc: Firmware htc_9271.fw requested
[ 193.529117] usbcore: registered new interface driver ath9k_htc
[ 193.559386] usb 1-1: firmware: direct-loading firmware htc_9271.fw
[ 193.813078] usb 1-1: ath9k_htc: Firmware - htc_9271.fw download failed
[ 193.813319] usb 1-1: ath9k_htc: USB layer deinitialized
proof that the drivers are already on the HDD
root@Saturn:/lib/firmware# ls -al *htc*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 72992 Jan 20 2013 htc_7010.fw
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 51272 Jan 20 2013 htc_9271.fw