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ujjain
Contributor
Contributor

Clipboard operations (copy/paste) often stop working on VMware Workstation

I have a dual-screen set-up with a Windows host and a Linux virtual machine.

  • Windows Host: Windows 7 x64, VMware Workstation (8.0.5, most recent)
  • Linux VM: CentOS 6.4 x64 (most recent) + VMware Tools (most recent)

The shared clipboard feature is of great importance to me. I often copy commands from the Windows host into the Linux VM, but clipboard sharing often stops working.

A reboot of the guest does not solve the issue. A reboot of the Windows host machine does solve the issue, although it's only a temporary measure. The issue often comes back within 20-30 minutes after reboot.

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3 Replies
ujjain
Contributor
Contributor

Yes, it's a 2 star article for a reason. Restarting vmware-user with the following commands does not help:

pkill vmware-user
vmware-user

Restarting the entire guest VM does not solve the issue either.

marvinkeene
Contributor
Contributor

The clipboard isn't fixed on VMware workstation 9 either.

I am running version 9..0.2 build 1031769.  All my VMware tools are at the current version.  My environment is a Windows host with a combination of Windows and Linux VM guests running.  I rarely use unity mode, so it does not come into play here.

  What I have found is that copy/paste works fine between Windows hosts and Windows guests as long as you don't start a Linux VM guest.  Sometime after one starts a Linux VM guest, the feature quits working.  In other words, I cannot paste something from the Windows host clipboard into a Windows guest application (though I can often do the reverse).