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joeschmoe
Contributor
Contributor

Problem with cut&paste between Mac & Windows-in-the-VM

Trying to copy some text between a Mac Terminal window and a web-browser running in a VM. Tried two things:

1) drag-and-drop the text from the Mac to the VM. The text seems to be movable, but when I drop it, it just jumps back.

2) Did Copy on the Mac side, then Paste on the Windows side. Didn't work. Some earlier piece of text gets pasted. Is there some trick to getting the text to "push" through to the clipboard on the "other side"?

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jgl1975
Expert
Expert

I also have the same problem sometimes.

Usually when I try again to copy/paste, it works.

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tirmidi
Contributor
Contributor

I've seen the same behavior, especially in earlier betas.

I suspect that the "clipboard" (or whatever it is that holds copied text) doesn't clear for some reason. However, if you restart your VM (not merely suspend and resume it), it generally works again.

There are clipboard tools for both Mac and PC that let you see what's on the clipboard, and even edit it in situ. But they are cumbersome, and the problem occurs rather infrequently, at least for me.

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admin
Immortal
Immortal

You didn't say this, so I thought I'd check - Tools are installed, right? What version? What guest is this? Can you drag-and-drop files? Can you go from the guest to the host?

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joeschmoe
Contributor
Contributor

You didn't say this, so I thought I'd check - Tools

are installed, right? What version? What guest is

this? Can you drag-and-drop files? Can you go from

the guest to the host?

Guest is Windows XP.

At the time I wrote this, Tools were installed, but they were the "beta" (50460) build. I just updated/upgraded them to the "release" build ('About' now says 51348), but the problems persist. That is: drag/drop text from host to guest results in the text being picked up and begin dragged around, but then it "bounces back" and is not pasted into the guest. And the usual Command/C in host, then paste in guest doesn't work (the guest clipboard still holds whatever it did before)

Drag/drop files works (Yey!)

guest->host doesn't work either (i.e., what is happening is that the two clipboards are not communicating - thus, their contents is different)

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edtd
Contributor
Contributor

I'm having the same problem. Sometimes copy/paste between host and guest works, other times it does not. I can't reliably reproduce the error either. Last time it happened I tried to paste from host (mac os 10.5.1) to guest (windows xp sp2) and the paste in guest pasted the last thing copied in the guest os instead of the (more recent) copy in the host os. I searched online in the host os for about 10 minutes with no luck, and then tried pasting again and it worked. That was yesterday. Today it's not working again. Well, it wasn't working. I just tried again and it is working now.

I'm running VMware Fusion Version 1.1 (62573). VMware tools is installed. As I said, sometimes it works.

Since copy/paste is listed as a selling point on every VMware Fusion list I've seen, I hope this gets resolved quickly. If it's a configuration problem, perhaps in future versions the selling points listed on the box should be a bit easier to enable.

-


Ok - while writing this post I've done some more testing. After some time, I am able to paste from host to guest. If I then copy something in the guest os, I can paste it into the host. But if I now copy from the host again, and try pasting in the guest, the most recent text copied from the guest is pasted instead of the most recent text copied on the computer (in the host os).

Also, if I copy something in the guest os, then paste it into the host os, everything works. If I then copy something is the host os, and try pasting it to the guest os, the text pasted is the last text copied in the guest os. The interesting thing is that if I then return to the host os and try pasting, I again get the last item pasted in the guest os, instead of what i expected, the last text copied in the host os (which is the last text copied on the computer). If I copy text in the host os, and then paste in the host os without doing any copy/paste in the guest os, everything works as expected.

Hope that helps...

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Piggy
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I don't recall offhand if I experience problems with copy from XP to Mac not working, but I definately have issues with Mac to XP copy not working. Occasionally I have to command-c several times to get it to work and no, I don't have a problem with my keyboard. Smiley Happy

I don't run in Unity mode and have never been able to use command-c/v/p in both Mac and XP. I have to use ctrl-c/v/p in XP. Maybe I need to un-install and re-install VMware. It's been a couple of releases since I've done that. I've tried Sharpkeys and that doesn't help. I suspect there's an underlying problem with the key scancode that VMware is setting.

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edtd
Contributor
Contributor

>Freedom to choose over 60 operating systems

>Only VMware Fusion gives you the most complete support for Microsoft Windows Vista Business, Enterprise, Ultimate, Windows XP, Linux, Solaris, or any of the more than sixty supported PC operating systems. Share files between virtual machines and your Mac with drag and drop, copy and paste text, and resize virtual machine desktops with ease.

>Does VMware Fusion support Windows Vista?

>Yes, VMware Fusion offers complete support for Microsoft Vista Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate editions with copy and paste of text, drag and drop of files, shared folders, and screen resizing.

What should take me second ends up taking minutes. Workarounds can only be tolerated so long. VMware definitely feels a bit faster than Parallels, but Parallels worked. Does anyone know of a way to fix copy/paste from host to guest os?

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Piggy
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I had some time the other night so I decided to try an uninstall, delete all the library,application, etc. files (everything except my VMs), rebooted, re-installed, rebooted, brought up my Windows VM, uninstalled Tools, restarted it, re-installed tools. All of this had no effect.

I'm on the road and don't have the ability nor time to create a fresh Windows VM to see if it exhibits the same problem. Cut and Paste works OK in Unity mode from the limited testing I've done but I choose not to run in that mode. (Is there a way for VMware to set the icon that Mac OS displays? The Windows application icons look terrible expanded to the size used by OS X.) Based on Unity working it dosn't seem like the issue is with a conflicting application on the Mac side. That said I'll try later with both Mac and Windows prevented from loading start up applications and we'll see if it makes a difference.

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edtd
Contributor
Contributor

I do run in Unity mode and still have copy/paste problems. Here is a list of actions I take and the results of those actions.

1. wait for a long (but unspecified time)

2. copy text "host text" in the host os.

3. paste text in the host os. the result is "host text"

4. paste text in the guest os. the result is "host text"

5. copy text "guest text" in the guest os.

6. paste text in the guest os. the result is "guest text"

7. paste text in the host os. the result is "guest text"

8. copy text "host text 2" in the host os.

9. paste text in the host os. the result is "host text 2"

10. paste text in the guest os. the result is "guest text"

11. paste text in the host os. the result is "guest text"

Notice that between step 10 and 11 I never copied the text "guest text". The last text I copied was "host text 2" in the host os, but just the act of pasting text in the guest os overwrites the host os clipboard. So pasting in the guest os will also copy the most recent text copied in the guest os to the host os clipboard. I can't see this ever being the desired functionality, so I'm going to say this is a bug. Even if a fresh install would be a temporary remedy (who knows how long before this would start happening again) this needs to be fixed. The time I waste trying to find ways around this broken feature is approaching the time it would have taken me to go back to parallels and perform a fresh install. On a related note, does anyone know of a VMware to Parallels converter? I know one exists to go the opposite way, but haven't been able to find one to return to parallels.

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