Can't copy/paste Windows 10 serial

[WhiteKnight]

I'm using a German keyboard layout with a German Windows 7/64 version as host OS.

Whenever I try to paste the serial for the current Insider Preview version of Windows 10 from host to guest, the serial in the guest's input field gets changed. It looks as if the text which has been copied to the clipboard is converted to keyboard strokes on paste if the clipboard in the guest OS can not be used for pasting. (The guest OS is not installed yet. Hence, VMware tools isn't installed on the guest OS, either ... naturally.)

The process of converting text to keyboard strokes seems to be implemented wrong. I don't know what it does, but the text pasted into the guest's input field looks like it's been typed on a US American keyboard. So, in my case, "Y" and "Z" are swapped and some of the punctuation charcters get swapped, too.

Right at the beginning of Windows 10 setup, I did confirm the preselected German keyboard, language and region selection.

VMware, please fix. It is so annoying to be required to type cryptical passwords manually.

Skipping to enter the serial number at the beginning of setup is no remedy. Before starting Windows 10 for the first time, you have to enter the serial anyway. Similar result, except that the swapped characters aren't even inserted when pasting:

(This is a public serial so there's no harm in publishing part of it.)

The yellow text reads: "Invalid character. Verify your product key and try again."

[joel0m]

I get the same issue with my Dvorak layout.  VMware seems to hard code their software to assume that the client is using QWERTY.  I believe Hyper-V pastes properly no matter what the guest OS keyboard layout is (on Windows, don't know about Linux).

[TracyHuang]

Thanks for the posting!

Would you please provide more detail on how did you copy/paste serial from Host to guest? As you mentioned: The guest OS is not installed yet. Hence, VMware tools isn't installed on the guest OS, either ... naturally. If no vmware tool installed, the copy/paste should not work as expected.

[WhiteKnight]

Wouldn't it be an option for VMware Workstation to convert strings into virtual keyboard strokes on the host for pasting them as keyboard strokes to the guest when VMware tools aren't available?

I. e.:

foreach (char c in string input)
{

   int vkey = ConvertCharToVirtualKey(c);

  SendKeyToVMKeyboard(vkey);

}

[joel0m]

To paste into a VM without extensions, I copy text, such as a product key, to my host's clipboard, then in Workstation I click Edit -> Paste.  In my experience Paste is always available whether or not VMware Tools are installed.  Paste seems to simply type the clipboard contents in the QWERTY layout, without regard to what my host or guest OS have as keyboard layouts.

VMware Tools do not fix the problem in my experience.  It happens with Windows and Linux guests, with and without Tools.

[TracyHuang]

Finally I got the point, thanks for your clarification. This should be an issue and we will report to relative team to fix this. Thanks again!

[sidjet01]

Dear TracyHuang

Thank you for taking this point as an issue, this feature should be a great one when using jailed vm without remote networked managmement enabled and using the feature monitor cycle feature embede in vmware workstation (15.5 for me).

Do you know if this is planned in a future update ? or integrated in vmware workstation 16 ?

Regards