Workstation 16.2.2 Paste greyed out

[Soundwave2019]

Good Evening,

I use Workstation Pro 16 for my work. I use it to manage VMs after I have stood them up, and part of the process involves copying and pasting a product key into the VM to activate it. Before I was able to do this without an issue using Workstation Pro 14, however recently I upgraded to 16.2.2 and this feature is now greyed out.

My goal is simple, I want to be able to paste a Windows product key during the initial OS installation into the VM. I have tried a number of solutions including starting Workstation as an Administrator on my work computer. However none of these solutions seem to be working for me.

It is my understanding that VMWare Workstation can copy and paste short strings specifically for the purpose of using product keys for VMs. I do not believe that installing VMWare Tools will not work for me because I need to be able to do this during the initial OS install; before there is a file system to install on to.

Any advice is welcome.

Thanks,

[RDPetruska]

Fairly certain that in order to use copy/paste and other sharing features, the VMware Tools must be installed.  Therefore, as you have said, you cannot do this during OS installation, before the Tools could possibly be installed.

[Soundwave2019]

I was able to do this with VMWare Workstation Pro 14 without issue, and I know the copy-paste feature works by taking strings in the clipboard and turning them into keypresses on an emulated keyboard, and I have heard that you should be able to copy and paste short strings without vmware-tools specifically for the purpose of copying and pasting product keys during installation.

I would be very upset if I had to downgrade just to regain functionality. I upgraded to 16 specifically on the expectation that I would *gain* functionality.

I would be very appreciative if anyone has any advice for me on how I can enable this feature.

[ender_ · Accepted solution]

It's a bug, I think it was fixed in 16.2.4, but if not, you have to upgrade to the Technical Preview (where it does work).

[Soundwave2019]

That did the trick!

Thank you so much! Hopefully future workstation users can see this.