topic Re: Drag & Drop / Copy & Paste in VMware Fusion Discussions

Drag & Drop / Copy & Paste

DKeim — Wed, 21 Dec 2022 14:38:52 GMT

I don't know when this started, but for some reason, I can no longer drag&drop or cut/paste files or copy/paste TEXT from one VMware client to another VMware client.

I am running Fusion Professional 8.5.10 Pro (and before you say it - Please don't - I can NOT upgrade the version since my Mac OS will not support newer versions. I am on High Sierra)

Mostly, I like to copy/paste text information back and forth especially from one Windows VMware client to another Windows VMware client.

Re: Drag & Drop / Copy & Paste

Technogeezer — Wed, 21 Dec 2022 15:33:11 GMT

No, I’m not going to say to upgrade macOS, However note that you are running a configuration that VMware didn’t test or support.

According to https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2088571 Fusion 8.5 isn’t supported on High Sierra. There were many posts at the time of people that could not get 8.5 to work on High Sierra. Or had to use hacks like disabling SIP to get it to run.

You may wish to see if this issue can be reproduced on Fusion versions that are listed as supported for High Sierra (10.0 through 11.5).

What Windows guest operating systems are you running? (With versions, please). It might be possible that these versions might need an upgrade to their VMware Tools versions because of updates to Windows.

Re: Drag & Drop / Copy & Paste

DKeim — Wed, 21 Dec 2022 21:40:28 GMT

I can’t remember when I upgraded to 8.5 but the dates on the app indicate I was notified of 8.5 in 2016…

So I installed it.

I was not aware that it was not supported in High Sierra. And everything has worked beautifully for years. And Copy/Paste between clients and between clients and host have been working great all these years. I have NOT attempted to upgrade since then because ‘If it ain’t broke, Don’t fix it’.

But all of a sudden this capability stopped. Now, I have to share a document in order to get things over to another client. Client to client, host to client and client to host is now gone.

I will survive if necessary. I purchased a new Mac (Studio M1 chip) in the hopes of moving everything to it, only to find out that it does NOT support Intel chipped windows or at least it has not so far.

So, I am stuck with 8.5 and my old Mac.

I run numerous client OS versions. 2003 Windows server, 2008 Windows server, Windows 7 ultimate, Windows 10, Red Hat Linux, Ubunto, and few others and have customers that are tied to these versions that I am supporting.

Re: Drag & Drop / Copy & Paste

DKeim — Wed, 21 Dec 2022 21:44:11 GMT

This is the dates on when I was notified of the upgrade available.

Re: Drag & Drop / Copy & Paste

Technogeezer — Wed, 21 Dec 2022 22:35:54 GMT

@DKeim wrote:
I purchased a new Mac (Studio M1 chip) in the hopes of moving everything to it, only to find out that it does NOT support Intel chipped windows or at least it has not so far.

So, I am stuck with 8.5 and my old Mac.

I run numerous client OS versions. 2003 Windows server, 2008 Windows server, Windows 7 ultimate, Windows 10, Red Hat Linux, Ubunto, and few others and have customers that are tied to these versions that I am supporting.

I would not hold my breath on ether Fusion or Parallels being able to run x86/x64 operating systems on Apple Silicon. . Neither VMware or Parallels is in the CPU chipset emulation business. And QEMU shows us that CPU emulation doesn’t perform well.

As far as the Mac goes, the Intel ship has sailed and will be over the horizon out of sight in a couple of years

Re: Drag & Drop / Copy & Paste

wila — Wed, 21 Dec 2022 23:58:19 GMT

Hi,

Drag & drop and Copy & Paste stopping to work has been a problem since ... years (can't remember when that started fusion 3?)

It usually works again after rebooting the guest OS. This is a feature that is provided by VMware Tools.
It is also possible to just restart the vmware tools binary responsible.

eg. run the following as administrator and wait a few minutes for things to settle down.

taskkill /F /IM vmtoolsd.exe
"C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Tools\vmtoolsd.exe" -n vmusr

As you mention that you see the problem with all your guest OS's, it is also possible that the issue is at the host OS end. I'm not exactly sure what to do in that case. I would probably first try a full uninstall -reboot- and re-install of VMware Fusion in that case. OR ... maybe just reboot the host first.

--
Wil

Re: Drag & Drop / Copy & Paste

Technogeezer — Thu, 22 Dec 2022 00:40:09 GMT

@wila Haven’t there also been issues with the temp directory filling up that’s used by the drag/drop mechanism.

Re: Drag & Drop / Copy & Paste

ColoradoMarmot — Thu, 22 Dec 2022 05:06:08 GMT

Well, the machine you’re on now doesn’t get security updates and hasn’t for some time, so you definitely need to upgrade as soon as you can, especially if this is for paid work. My suggestion is to grab a refurbished 2019 Intel Mac. That should last you a few more years.

once apple stops providing os updates for it (best guess is ~5 years), if you need to do Intel based support, buying a windows machine and running workstation will be your only option. They’ve now confirmed that they only provide security updates for the current and immediately previous versions, so you’ll have about a years notice when Intel is end of life.

as for the copy paste, one option (highly recommended) is to get on a supported version of fusion. You can buy a 13 license and support can downgrade the key for fusion 10. Just make sure you make a non Time Machine backup, with the vms shut down (not suspended) and all snapshots removed before upgrading.

Re: Drag & Drop / Copy & Paste

dempson — Fri, 23 Dec 2022 02:12:57 GMT

@ColoradoMarmot wrote:

once apple stops providing os updates for it (best guess is ~5 years), if you need to do Intel based support, buying a windows machine and running workstation will be your only option. They’ve now confirmed that they only provide security updates for the current and immediately previous versions, so you’ll have about a years notice when Intel is end of life.

Unless something has changed since earlier this month, Apple provides security updates for the current major macOS version and the two preceding major versions, as has been the pattern since they settled into a roughly annual release cycle. Most recently, on 2022-12-13 they released a feature and security update for macOS Ventura (13.1), plus security updates for macOS Monterey (12.6.2) and macOS Big Sur (11.7.2).

There is the issue that they only provide full security updates for the current version - older versions get a subset of security updates which are able to be ported back without major work.

as for the copy paste, one option (highly recommended) is to get on a supported version of fusion. You can buy a 13 license and support can downgrade the key for fusion 10.

That wasn't an option I knew about - the licence manager only offers downgrading by one version for new licences, so I assumed it wasn't possible to get a new licence for anything older than version 12 now that version 13 has been released. (I haven't experimented with downgrading my in-use licence keys as I don't want to risk breaking them, and VMware documentation I've found doesn't clearly explain what happens after you downgrade.)

Re: Drag & Drop / Copy & Paste

ColoradoMarmot — Fri, 23 Dec 2022 19:44:10 GMT

Apple released a formal support policy a couple of months back: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/10/apple-clarifies-security-update-policy-only-the-latest-oses-are-fully-patched/?comments=1&comments-page=1

While they may backport a subset of the patches, they are leaving some issues unpatched, which is a major issue (especially for commercial work - running OS's with known vulnerabilities, without compensating controls, is...well...bad to use a technical term).

I expect that as intel fades into the distance, patches for older versions on it disappear faster than for the M1's. A year is about as long as folks should count on to be safe (and of course, if they don't give us a 'next version is M1 only' then it may be only a few months from WWDC to October for when intel machines lose full support. And of course, High Sierra hasn't been supported in quite a while. Call it an 'apple tax' to keep on supported OS/Hardware platform (note that OpenCore isn't really a legitimate option, especially for commercial use).

You'll need to contact VMWare support to downgrade that far (they portal doesn't do more than one).