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Toerktumlare
Contributor
Contributor

Copy paste in Windows 10/Server not working after installing tools

Operating system: macOS Cataline 10.15

VMWare Fusion: 11.5.0

Expected behaviour

When creating a vm from the microsoft windows 10 evaluation copy, after installing tools the feature to copy paste should be available from host to the guest system.

Actual behaviour

After installation this feature is not available

Steps to reproduce

Download the windows 10 evaluation enterprise copy from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-windows-10-enterprise

create a new vm with default settings.

start installation process.

installation process will ask for licence key, at this stage shutdown the vm.

in the virtual machine library select the vm\s settings.

choose floppy drive, uncheck the checkbox "connect floppy drive".

Start the VM again and go through the full installation process.

When logged into the installed windows choose from the host top menu Virtual Machine > CD/DVD (SATA) > Choose disc or Disc image

Navigate to windows.iso on my mac it is found in ./System/Volumes/Data/Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Library/isoimages/windows.iso and mount it into the drive.

Install wmtools x64 version.

After several restarts try then to copy pasting from host to guest

doesn't work.

I have tried the exact same thing with windows 2019 server edition, and windows 2016 Server edition, no copy paste is working there either after tools installation.

I have done this full process 2 times with full download of all the things 2 to eliminate any reason of corrupted downloads/installations.

Why does the floppy trigger licensing, and there is no documentation about this issue. Took me 45 minutes of googling to figure out. And installation of tools is grayed out in the top menu, so even more googling to find info about the "windows.iso" and then on top of that copy pasting still doesn't work.i have ever paid for

This is one of the buggiest softwares i have every paid for and the documentation is pretty much non existent. Horrible quality tbh.

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bfan
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Hi,

Sorry for your inconvenience. For creating VM, dose your windows 10 image can be recognized by Easy Install? if so, vmtools will be installed after VM installation finished.

Provided VM is installed by manual,  at the first time, need to shutdown VM and power it on again to resolve the problem that 'Install VMware Tools' is grayed out.  (Restart VM does not work). 

Does only Copy Paste feature not work in guest? or VM tools not does work at all? could you check other tools feature work or not, like Drag Drop, shared folder. also, in the Windows Task Manager, there should be  two process both named vmtoolsd.exe  exist, one is belong to SYSTEM, the other is belong to user.

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Toerktumlare
Contributor
Contributor

No after install the cd-drive is mounted with the windows 10 enterprise x64 installation iso.

So to install tools i need to manually eject that, and then find the windows.iso iso and mount that and launch the tools installation manually.

During all this time the menu option of installing tools is grayed out.

Drag and drop works and shared folder both works. And i have two processes running vmtoolsd.exe one run by the user, the other us run by no name.

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bfan
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

'Install VMware Tools' should be enabled when the second VM power on, so while clicking it, windows.iso will automatically mount to CD drive instead of win 10 installation iso.

Technically, Copy Paste and Drag Drop using the same plugin in guest, they are suppose to be both worked.  The content you copied is a file or text? dose it work from guest to host?

Could you help to reproduce this problem and attach ~/Library/Logs/VMware\ Fusion/vmware-vmfusion.log

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