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ahmd9
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

What's the easiest/fastest way to restore copy/paste & drag-and-drop functions without a reboot?

It seems to be happening on a constant basis when copy-and-paste and drag-and-drop stop working between guests and the host OS in my VM Workstation 10. Usually shutting down all guests and then rebooting the host OS fixes the issue, but it takes me about 10 minutes to do so. (I have several guests running in a host, plus the host desktop has its own software that runs all the time. So rebooting is a costly process.)

So I'm curious, is there a faster (i.e. easier) way to restore these functions?

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wila
Immortal
Immortal

Hi,

Not sure what the exact cause is of your problem, but I've had a tiny script in the past that did just that.

Note that I have not needed it to use that particular script here for years.

Doesn't harm to try though.

"C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Tools\vmtoolsd.exe" -n vmusr

Check the above path that it is where vmtoolsd.exe is on your machine as the actual file location might be different.

--

Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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ahmd9
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Thanks for the info. I generally do not like running scripts if I don't know what they are for. Can you explain what it does?

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wila
Immortal
Immortal

Hello,

Sure, the vmtoolsd binary from VMware is the daemon that takes care of all of the VMware Tools integrations.

This is the executable that should normally be running in your guest OS if VMware Tools is properly working, it is called "VMware Tools Core Service".

In fact if everything is OK you have it running 2 times.

1x under your normal user

1x under the system account

If the vmware tools running as your normal user is faulting then you would get the type of problem you described.

Of course there are other ways to get that same problem.

--

Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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ahmd9
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Sorry, for the delay. Somehow I didn't get an email when you replied.

So I tried to run the following

"C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Tools\vmtoolsd.exe" -n vmusr 

on the guest OS that fails (Windows 7) I ran it as administrator too. And all it did is that it started another copy of vmtools and added a new icon to the system tray but didn't fix the issue.

What am I doing wrong?

PS. What is interesting is that if I boot up another guest (Windows 7 as well) copy-paste and drag-and-drop seem to work just fine there.

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wila
Immortal
Immortal

Hi,

Did not see an email confirmation on your reply either so I think I understand Smiley Happy

re. Don't think your doing anything wrong. As I mentioned, it was an old workaround for an issue in the past.

The only reason I suggested it was because you mentioned that it worked OK after rebooting the guest and that was one of the symptoms.

You should have 2 vmtoolsd processes running, but one as you and one as SYSTEM. If you have 2 processes running under your user then it isn't helping.

Your problem must be something else. As you mention it works OK with another guest and in that case I'd say something is wrong with your VMware tools install. The fix for that is: uninstall vmware tools from your guest, reboot guest, install VMware Tools, reboot guest.

The repair install option pretty much never has worked for me so cannot suggest that to fix the VMware Tools setup, but the uninstall/reinstall normally does do wonders.

You might want to take a snapshot of your VM (or full backup if that makes you more comfortable) before doing this.

--

Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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ahmd9
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Thanks. Just been trying to fully uninstall VM tools in the guest OS, then reboot and install it again.... with no luck.

I eventually gave up trying to fix this and had to revert to the snapshot that I made when I just installed the OS in the guest... that of course involved me loosing all other software and then re-installing it for about a couple of hours. Oh well, too bad that there's no predefined way to reset the interface between the host and the guest OS without resorting to such a drastic measure...

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